- 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. -
- -- An Ardour session is a container for an entire project. A - session may contain an arbitrary number of tracks and - busses consisting of audio and MIDI 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. -
-- Ardour sessions are held in directories; these directories contain one or - more session files, 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. -
-- Ardour's session file is kept in - XML 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 SMF. -
-- 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. -
-- Ardour has a single current session at all times; if Ardour is started - without specifying one, it will offer to load or create one. -
-- More details can be found at - Working With Sessions. -
- -- A track is a concept common to most - DAWs, 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. -
-- 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. -
-- 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. -
-- 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. -
-- More details can be found at - Working With Tracks. -
- -- Busses 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. -
-- 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 - groups. -
- -- A track may contain many segments of audio or MIDI. Ardour contains - these segments in things called regions, 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. -
-- More details can be found at - Working With Regions. -
- -- The details of what exactly each track should play back is described by a - playlist. 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. -
-- More details can be found at - Working With Playlists. -
- -- Ardour allows you to process audio and MIDI using any number of - plugins. 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: -
-
- 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.
- 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.
-
- More details can be found at - Working With Plugins. -