Ardour VS Synthesia

Ardour Reviews

1. Guto Santana    

   Director at LAS Cons Art EIRELI | over 1 year 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.

Synthesia Reviews

Ardour mentions (110)

• Ask HN: Is There a Blender for Music?

  Effects you can hear. [0] https://ardour.org/ [1[ https://cybershow.uk/. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months 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 / 7 months 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 / 7 months ago

• Absolute beginner seeking advice

  I am aware of the 'Real Tone Cable' however I am curious if this is what I should be buying if I also intend on recording my playing in a software such as 'Ardour'. Source: 10 months ago

• How to map multiple samples with linux-sampler?

  I just loaded an instance of samplv https://samplv1.sourceforge.io/ into the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), Ardour https://ardour.org/ . Source: 10 months ago

Synthesia mentions (43)

• Ask HN: Tooling for Learning to Play Piano?

  Synthesia https://synthesiagame.com/ As a vistual learner and grapgical thinker, those music score on paper are all bullshit to me. Only this can help me out. You can import your own MIDI into it. Practice the shit out of it and at least can play 1 or 2 fairly advanced songs. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago

• You can learn how to play a piano song with the Meta Quest 3 without having to go back and forth with a YouTube video.

  I suggest using Synthesia instead. Doesn't require a VR headset, is not made by Facebook, and does the same job. Source: 5 months ago

• Best software for learning piano with midi keyboard?

  I've got Synesthesia installed, which is pretty good (and has a free version) but doesn't show hand positions and has a limited number of song options. Source: 6 months ago

• Show HN: Learn piano without sheet music

  Synthesia has done this exact solution for well over a decade now. But there’s also the option to read generated sheet music and adjust the playback and gradung in many ways. https://synthesiagame.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago

• If you had the ability to instantly learn any skill or profession, what would you choose and why?

  If you have a keyboard try using Synthesia! Source: 10 months ago