Ardour Reviews

1. Guto Santana

   · Director at LAS Cons Art EIRELI · almost 4 years ago
   Great for the poor man. Still needs A LOT of improvements, specially on midi editing.

   Copy Yes, you can start a project from scratch and end up with a great sounding track using Ardour. Specially if you use mostly audio. For those like me who use both audio and midi editing, it may easily drive you to a real nightmare. The DAW doesn't behave as you would expect. The "share regions" will get you good as you edit one region and it "magically" ruins the original one. Oh, just use copy instead of share, like they say right? Nope. It still bugs you to the bone. So you have to go manually "unlinking" every single region. Some regions may be a single note, for example, and you can miss that. Oh, so I will consolidate all regions before unlinking! Nope, there is not such thing here. Another example: You want to keep only a certain midi note on your midi track, the C3 that is you Drum Kick. You cannot do it, unless if you go deleting every single other note, one by one! Terrible isn't it? No, you cannot copy a single note through the entire track. Sometimes I managed to select a note through the track and delete it. So I took note how I did it and... Next time it's a negative! With so many different selections of tools, smart, playhead, etc, it appears the DAW confuses itself and do not respond appropriately. So... my advice to you is not to fall for what I did, which is believing Ardour can do everything it says it does, cause it doesn't. Keep simple with audio recording and editing. Do your midi stuff elsewhere and run from the nightmare I got myself into. Nevertheless, it is great cost/benefit DAW. Worthy a try. Yes, you can start a project from scratch and end up with a great sounding track using Ardour. Specially if you use mostly audio. For those like me who use both audio and MIDI editing, it may easily drive you into a real nightmare. The DAW doesn't behave as you would expect. The "share regions" will get you good as you edit one region and it "magically" ruins the original one. Oh, just use copy instead of share, like they say right? Nope. It still bugs you to the bone. So you have to go manually "unlinking" every single region. Some regions may be a single note, for example, and you can miss that. Oh, so I will consolidate all regions before unlinking! Nope, there is not such thing here. Another example: You want to keep only a certain midi note on your midi track, the C3 that is you Drum Kick. You cannot do it, unless if you go deleting every single other note, one by one! Terrible isn't it? No, you cannot copy a single note through the entire track. Sometimes I managed to select a note through the track and delete it. So I took note how I did it and... Next time it's a negative! With so many different selections of tools, smart, playhead, etc, it appears the DAW confuses itself and do not respond appropriately. So... my advice to you is not to fall for what I did, which is believing Ardour can do everything it says it does, cause it doesn't. Keep simple with audio recording and editing. Do your midi stuff elsewhere and run from the nightmare I got myself into. Nevertheless, it is great cost/benefit DAW. Worthy a try.

Makerkit.dev Reviews

Ardour mentions (112)

• 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense

  > Ok dude, you obviously never recorded anything. https://ardour.org/ is my website. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago

• Ardour 9.0 Released

  Or get involved with the community at - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago

• Ask HN: Is There a Blender for Music?

  Effects you can hear. [0] https://ardour.org/ [1[ https://cybershow.uk/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago

• What Is the Future of the DAW?

  I'm the lead author of Ardour [0], and I'd very much like to hear more about your frustrations, since over the next 1-2 years, paying attention to non-European musical culture is one of the things I hope to focus on during development. You can reach me via the email address in my profile, or maybe use our forums at discourse.ardour.org. Thanks. [0] https://ardour.org/ <= a cross-platform open source DAW that has... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago

• Red Blob Games: Interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms

  One extra detail, something I've learned from 20 years of working on dragging all kinds of objects around the GUI of Ardour [0]: handle ALL button press and release events as drag events where there is no movement. [0] https://ardour.org/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago

Makerkit.dev mentions (2)

• The 10 Best Next.js Starter Kits for SaaS in 2026

  Price: $299 (Pro, individual) / $599 (Teams, 5 collaborators) - one-time, lifetime access URL: makerkit.dev. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago

• Ask HN: What boilerplate, if any, are you using in 2025

  I saw these ones mentioned in an HN comment: - https://achromatic.dev - https://makerkit.dev - https://www.spirokit.com/ - https://saasykit.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago