Ardour (software)

Ardour
Original authorPaul Davis
DevelopersDavid Robillard, Robin Gareus, Nick Mainsbridge, Colin Fletcher, Ben Loftis, Tim Mayberry
Release23 September 2005; 21 years ago (2005-09-23)
Stable release
9.8 Edit this on Wikidata / 23 August 2026; 2 months ago (23 August 2026)
Written inC++ (GTK 2)
Operating systemFreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows
Available inEnglish
TypeDigital audio workstation
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later
Websiteardour.org Edit this at Wikidata
Repository

Ardour is a free and open-source digital audio workstation and hard disk recorder that runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD and Microsoft Windows. Its primary author is Paul Davis, who is also responsible for the JACK Audio Connection Kit. Released under the GNU General Public License, it is intended to be suitable for professional use.

Features

Mixing

Ardour supports an arbitrary number of tracks and buses through an "anything to anywhere" routing system. All gain, panning and plug-in parameters can be automated. All sample data is mixed and maintained internally in 32-bit floating point format.

Editing

Ardour supports dragging, trimming, splitting and time-stretching recorded regions with sample-level resolution, and supports layer regions. It includes a crossfade editor and beat detection, unlimited undo/redo, and a "snapshot" feature for saving the current state of a session to a file.

Mastering

Ardour can be used as an audio mastering environment. It can also export TOC and CUE files for creating audio CDs.

AI Functionality

Ardour has support for AI assisted workflows via an MCP server. It allows AI agents to insert and remove audio plug-ins, create and edit MIDI notes and regions, and modify other session information .

Compatibility

Ardour attempts to adhere to industry standards, such as SMPTE/MTC, Broadcast Wave Format, MIDI Machine Control and XML.

It has been tested on Linux, x86-64, x86, PowerPC and ARM (for at least version 3) architectures; Solaris, macOS on Intel and PowerPC, Windows on Intel architectures and FreeBSD. It takes advantage of all of these systems' multiprocessor, multicore SMP and real-time features.

Pre-built binaries of Ardour are available for purchase for Linux, macOS and Windows. It is also possible to build Ardour for free from the freely available source code.

Plug-ins

Ardour relies on plug-ins for many features, from audio effects processing to dynamic control. It supports the following plugin format and platform combinations: LV2 on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows; Audio Units on macOS; Steinberg's VST2 on Linux, macOS and Windows; LADSPA on Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows. It is theoretically possible to use plugins created for Windows in the VST2 format on Linux with the help of Wine, but the project team does not recommend it.

Import and export

Ardour can import audio clips into sessions from many common audio file formats, including WAV, FLAC, Vorbis, AIFF, CAF, W64, BWF and MP3; SMF files are supported for MIDI import.

Ardour can export whole sessions or parts of sessions, and import audio clips into sessions, using its built-in audio file database manager, or directly from an ordinary file browser.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Ardour 9.8 released". 23 August 2026. Retrieved 15 September 2026.
  2. ↑ "Ardour is licensed under the GNU Public License v2". Archived from the original on 2020-02-16. Retrieved 2019-03-06.
  3. ↑ Dave Phillips. "Introducing Ardour". Archived from the original on 2024-07-06. Retrieved 2024-07-06.
  4. ↑ "Ardour review". Archived from the original on 2020-02-16.
  5. ↑ "The Ardour Manual - Snapshots". Archived from the original on 2024-06-03. Retrieved 2025-01-06.
  6. ↑ "The Ardour Manual - Export Format Profiles". Archived from the original on 2024-11-14. Retrieved 2025-01-06.
  7. ↑ "The Ardour Manual - Using the MCP HTTP Surface". manual.ardour.org. Retrieved 2026-08-25.
  8. ↑ Borisov, Bobby (2026-05-19). "Ardour 9.5 DAW Released with Major MIDI Editing Improvements". Retrieved 2026-08-25.
  9. ↑ "The Ardour Manual - Preferences". Archived from the original on 2025-01-16. Retrieved 2025-01-06.
  10. ↑ "The Ardour Manual - Lua Scripting".
  11. ↑ "Ardour Downloads". 3 November 2023.
  12. ↑ "Ardour Downloads". 3 November 2023.
  13. ↑ "plugin_types.h". GitHub.
  14. ↑ "Using Windows VST Plugins on Linux". Archived from the original on 2021-01-11. Retrieved 2020-10-11.
  15. ↑ "Ardour Manual - Importing - Supported File Formats". 3 November 2023.
  16. ↑ "The Ardour Manual - Import Dialog". Archived from the original on 2024-11-14. Retrieved 2025-01-06.
  17. ↑ "Importing audio and MIDI :: Ardour Tutorial". Archived from the original on 2025-02-07. Retrieved 2025-01-06.

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