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----
-layout: default
-title: Understanding Basic Concepts and Terminology
----
-
-<p>
- This section will help you get acquainted with the basic terminology and
- concepts associated with Ardour. More detailed information on each aspect
- of the program is provided in later chapters.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Sessions</h2>
-<p>
- An <dfn>Ardour session</dfn> is a container for an entire project. A
- session may contain an arbitrary number of <dfn>tracks</dfn> and
- <dfn>busses</dfn> consisting of audio and <abbr title="Musical Instrument
- Digital Interface">MIDI</abbr> data, along with
- information on processing those tracks, a mix of levels, and everything
- else related to the project. A session might typically contain a song, or
- perhaps an entire album or a complete live recording.
-</p>
-<p>
- Ardour sessions are held in directories; these directories contain one or
- more <dfn>session files</dfn>, some or all of the audio and MIDI data and
- a number of other state files that Ardour requires. The session file
- describes the structure of the session, and holds automation data and
- other details.
-</p>
-<p>
- Ardour's session file is kept in
- <abbr title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> format, which is
- advantageous as it is somewhat human-readable, and human-editable in a
- crisis. Sound files are stored in one of a number of optional formats, and
- MIDI files as <abbr title="Standard MIDI File">SMF</abbr>.
-</p>
-<p>
- It is also possible for Ardour sessions to reference sound and MIDI files
- outside the session directory, to conserve disk space and avoid
- unnecessary copying if the data is available elsewhere on the disk.
-</p>
-<p>
- Ardour has a single current session at all times; if Ardour is started
- without specifying one, it will offer to load or create one.
-</p>
-<p>
- More details can be found at
- <a href="/working-with-sessions/">Working With Sessions</a>.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Tracks</h2>
-<p>
- A <dfn>track</dfn> is a concept common to most
- <abbr title="Digital Audio Workstation">DAWs</abbr>, and also used in
- Ardour. Tracks can record audio or MIDI data to disk, and then replay
- it with processing. They also allow the audio or MIDI data to be edited
- in a variety of different ways.
-</p>
-<p>
- In a typical pop production, one might use a track each for the kick
- drum, another for the snare, more perhaps for the drum overheads and
- others for bass, guitars and vocals.
-</p>
-<p>
- Ardour can record to any number of tracks at one time, and then play
- those tracks back. On playback, a track's recordings may be processed by
- any number of plugins, panned, and its level altered to achieve a
- suitable mix.
-</p>
-<p>
- A track's type is really only related to the type of data that it stores
- on disk. It is possible, for example, to have a MIDI track with a
- synthesizer plugin which converts MIDI to audio. Even though the track
- remains MIDI (in the sense that its on-disk recordings are MIDI), its
- output may be audio-only.
-</p>
-<p>
- More details can be found at
- <a href="/working-with-tracks/">Working With Tracks</a>.
-</p>
-
-<h2 id="busses">Busses</h2>
-<p>
- <dfn>Busses</dfn> are another common concept in both DAWs and hardware
- mixers. They are similar in many ways to tracks; they process audio or
- MIDI, and can run processing plugins. The only difference is that their
- input is obtained from other tracks or busses, rather than from disk.
-</p>
-<p>
- One might typically use a bus to collect together the outputs of related
- tracks. Consider, for example, a 3-track recording of a drum-kit; given
- kick, snare and overhead tracks, it may be helpful to connect the output
- of each to a bus called "drums", so that the drum-kit's level can be set
- as a unit, and processing (such as equalisation or compression) can be
- applied to the mix of all tracks. Such buses are also called
- <dfn>groups</dfn>.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Regions</h2>
-<p>
- A track may contain many segments of audio or MIDI. Ardour contains
- these segments in things called <dfn>regions</dfn>, which are
- self-contained snippets of audio or MIDI data. Any recording pass, for
- example, generates a region on each track that is enabled for recording.
- Regions can be subjected to many editing operations; they may be moved
- around, split, trimmed, copied, and so on.
-</p>
-<p>
- More details can be found at
- <a href="/working-with-regions/">Working With Regions</a>.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Playlists</h2>
-<p>
- The details of what exactly each track should play back is described by a
- <dfn>playlist</dfn>. A playlist is simply a list of regions; each track
- always has an active playlist, and can have other playlists which can be
- switched in and out as required.
-</p>
-<p>
- More details can be found at
- <a href="/working-with-playlists/">Working With Playlists</a>.
-</p>
-
-<h2>Plugins</h2>
-<p>
- Ardour allows you to process audio and MIDI using any number of
- <dfn>plugins</dfn>. These are external pieces of code, commonly seen as
- VST plugins on Windows or AU plugins on Mac OS X. Ardour supports
- the following plugin standards:
-</p>
-<dl class="wide-table">
- <dt><abbr title="Linux Audio Developers' Simple Plugin API">LADSPA</abbr></dt>
- <dd>the first major plugin standard for Linux. Many LADSPA plugins are
- available, mostly free and open-source.</dd>
- <dt><abbr title="LADSPA Version 2">LV2</abbr></dt>
- <dd>the successor to LADSPA. Lots of plugins have been ported from
- LADSPA to LV2, and also many new plugins written.</dd>
- <dt><abbr title="Virtual Studio Technology">VST</abbr></dt>
- <dd>Ardour supports VST plugins that have been compiled for Linux.</dd>
- <dt><abbr title="Audio Units">AU</abbr></dt>
- <dd>Mac OS X versions of Ardour support AudioUnit plugins.</dd>
-</dl>
-<p>
- Ardour has some support for running Windows VST plugins on Linux, but
- this is rather complicated, extremely difficult for the Ardour
- developers to debug, and generally unreliable, as it requires to run a
- large amount of Windows code in an emulated environment.<br />
- If it is at all possible, you are strongly advised to use native
- LADSPA, LV2 or Linux VST plugins on Linux, or AU on Mac OS X.
-</p>
-<p>
- More details can be found at
- <a href="/working-with-plugins/">Working With Plugins</a>.
-</p>
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