Ardour
Overview
Ardour is a professional, full-featured digital audio workstation (DAW) for recording, editing, and mixing multi-track audio and MIDI. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and is developed transparently by a worldwide team of musicians, programmers, and recording engineers. Ardour has been under active development for over two decades and is widely used in professional studios, podcast production, film scoring, and live recording.
Key Features
- Multi-track Recording: Record unlimited audio and MIDI tracks with sample-accurate precision
- Non-destructive Editing: Cut, move, stretch, crossfade, and align regions with unlimited undo/redo
- Professional Mixer: Full-featured mixer with floating-point fidelity, flexible routing, and support for external control surfaces
- Plugin Support: LV2, LADSPA, LinuxVST, AudioUnit, and CLAP plugin formats with full sample-accurate automation
- Video Timeline: Import video, extract audio, sync edits to picture for film and video scoring
- MIDI Capabilities: Full MIDI recording, editing, and sequencing with a built-in MIDI editor
- Transport Sync: MTC, MMC, JACK synchronisation for integration with external hardware and software
Why Use It
Ardour gives you complete control over your audio production pipeline. Unlike many commercial DAWs, it doesn’t lock you into a specific ecosystem or workflow. You choose the plugins, the routing, and the tools that work for you. Its transparent development, active community, and professional feature set make it a compelling choice for anyone serious about audio production.
Use Cases
- Music recording and production
- Podcast editing and mastering
- Film and video sound design
- Radio broadcast production
- Live concert recording
Platforms
Linux, macOS, Windows
Licence
GNU General Public License v2