Global preferences control general workflow and system configuration, and should apply to all sessions. They are located in Edit > Preferences and stored in Ardour's user configuration file in the user's home directory.

The Preferences window
The Preferences window

Preferences are conveniently grouped by category:

General

Appearance

Recorder

Editor

Mixer

Toolbar

Size and Scale

Colors

Quirks

Translation

Editor

Snap

Modifiers

This page allows to choose how things are done in the editor. This is a very flexible way for Ardour to match an existing workflow, or speed up the editing process based on the user's most used actions.

The Reset to recommended defaults button at the bottom provides a way to revert any user made change to its default value.

MIDI

MIDI Port Config

This page allows to set options for input and output MIDI devices, such as:

You can also give a more meaningful name to any input and output MIDI device here. Double-click the name of the device, enter a new name, then press Enter to confirm.

Transport

Chase

Generate

Plugins

The content of this preference page varies heavily between versions or Ardour: both the platform and the build-time options can make Ardour support some types of plugins and not others. While this documentation tries to show all possible options, most systems will only show a subset of the options hereunder, e.g. AudioUnits are macOS only…

VST

Audio Unit

Monitoring

Signal Flow

Metronome

Control Surfaces

This tab contains settings for control surfaces.

It lists all the Control Surface protocols Ardour knows. To enable a Control Surface Protocol, the Enable checkbox next to its name should be ticked. Editing the settings related to this protocol can be done by double-clicking its name or clicking the Show protocol settings (only for Generic MIDI and Open Sound Control).

Metering

Performance

Video

Triggering