Ardour
Ardour is a flexible open-source DAW designed for audio and MIDI recording, editing and mixing. In the context of spatial audio, its strengths are the integration with JACK, the high channel count per track and advanced routing options. Recording is limited only by the hardware it runs on, with no built-in cap on track or channel count, and it performs latency compensation to keep recorded material correctly positioned. It supports a wide range of plugin formats, including VST2, VST3, LV2, LADSPA and Audio Unit, and runs across Linux, macOS, FreeBSD and Microsoft Windows, released under the GNU General Public Licence.
tech specs
history
+–
Ardour was started by Paul Davis in late December 1999 as a personal project, born out of frustration with the lack of professional-grade, free multitrack recording software on Linux; the earliest version handled basic hard disk recording on a second-hand 486 PC with a Turtle Beach Tropez+ sound card. Davis brought the project to wider attention in 2001 through the Linux Audio Developers mailing list, and released the first public alpha in September 2005. He had also created JACK, the low-latency audio connection framework Ardour still relies on today, in 2002, work for which he received an Open Source Award in 2004. Ardour's development has since been supported by a series of commercial sponsors: Harrison Audio has funded the project since 2005 and built its own Mixbus DAW on Ardour's codebase, Solid State Logic funded Davis to work on it full-time through to the end of 2006 for version 2.0, Waves Audio sponsored development in 2009 while basing its Tracks Live product on Ardour, and the SAE Institute later supported improvements to its macOS port. MIDI sequencing and editing were added with version 3.0 in March 2010, extending the software beyond its original audio-only focus.
back to tools
