I want to bring this DAW back to attention. It has a long history (around 10 years), it started as a linux project, but is now available for all three major platforms. It's code base is open source, you only pay for a build, either by a minimum $1 monthly subscription, or by a one time buy (starting at $1 as well, although they will give you a bad feeling if you do so ;) )

If you are experienced in C++ and know what it takes to build a DAW from the source files, you even get it for free.

It comes with everything a DAW needs, even with its own effects; supports VST, AU and a third format I forgot (L something).
Everything is edited in place, in what we know of other DAWs as the track list. It even has little details that are very helpful, like an active mouse pointer that tells you informations about whatever you point at, very helpful when midi editing (tells midi key number, note, velocity, etc.), for example. Also it is instant, in contrast to the tooltips often used in Windows applications. Or the panner that not only pans, but also allows to freely define the audio width and width position of a track.
Sample-accurate automation of everything (also edited in place), you can even show parameters of a plugin in a list view for quick access without opening the plugin itself.

Many good ideas for workflow and production speed-up.

Does anybody use Ardour, or has other experiences with it? I would love to hear more about it. Especially as I couldn't find any negative reports about Ardour. A wet dream DAW with no issues, basically for free? It's hard to believe that.

 

LADSPA (sp)?

Haven't used it. I've herd it's a bit bloated, UI looks like it's targeting cubase. REAPER can do width control of a track, but it's hidden by default. There's also mle ways of accessing automation, too. I'm mostly happy with what I've got, but if you liek Ardour, good for you.

 

I'm afraid there's a misunderstanding. I don't own nor work with Ardour. The information I shared was from my googling around. I am just interested in experiences with Ardour, since there must be someone working with it (so I hope). I really would like to hear all the good things and all the bad things about that DAW. I'm curious.

Let's not make this thread becoming a further place where everyone just names the DAW he actually uses.

And you are almost right with your guess, @junh1024 . The third format is LV2, which is the successor of LADSPA, as I learnt today

Here's the official site (should you be as curious as I am): https://ardour.org/

 

I've been working with Ardour on OSX for a few months now. I really like it. Originally it was audio-only. MIDI was added more recently however I don't think the MIDI side is as developed as in DAWs like Logic. On OSX it supports AU, LV2, and with the latest version, VST. Documentation is out-of-date but if you've used any other DAW you can find your way around pretty easily. Support is great, especially the IRC channel. The developers are often online and answer questions quickly. The Harrison Mixbus is actually a paid version of Ardour although I'm not sure of the exact connection between the two. Updates are regular and the developers seem pretty open to suggestions for new features.

I have worked as a programmer/tech writer in the past and I can assure you that building Ardour from source (on OSX at least) is no trivial matter. It relies on a whole lot of free libraries like GTK which are a pain to get working on OSX. On Linux the story might be different. Not sure about Windows as the Windows version of Ardour was only recently released. If you are thinking of contributing (as I was) then that's a whole lot more difficult - the code base is large and involves real-time processing, DSP, GUI-threading, etc. Not for the faint-of-heart!

So far I've found Ardour to be very stable and capable of doing everything I need recording-wise. In the past, it didn't come with any plug-ins which was a nuisance however there are now quite a few free or low-budget ones available - ToneBoosters, Klanghelm, TDR, Valhalla, Zam, ATK, etc. so that's less of an issue. Some plug-ins were added recently although they're pretty rudimentary. I imagine that better plug-ins will be added as time goes by.

Why not give it a try?

Cheers!

 

Thank you very much, @ITHertz , for sharing your experiences! Especially since your report is detailed and balanced. The mentioning of Harrison Mixbus discourages me a bit. I tested this DAW a few months ago, and on my pretty old PC it was very sluggish. Loading took ages, and the GUI was all but responsive. After 10 minutes or so the whole thing crashed. I'm sure it will perform much better on actual PCs, and I like the fact that it is open source, yet professional. I want to support it, and my best chance is to subscribe ($1 a month is absolutely in my pocket) and then use it when I finally get a new PC.

To all others: If you also have experiences with Ardour, feel free to express them here. And since there is some kind of connection between Ardour and Mixbus, feel also free to comment here if you are using Mixbus!

 

I feel your ardour but have no experience using Ardour. I will however check it out for a look-see.

 

iirc harrisson funded some parts of ardour development so they could use a modified version of it in their consoles...
mixbus came a bit later. i think there was also a version of ardour that was made for sae.

before switching to reaper, i was a into linux audio and used ardour for a couple recordings with local bands.
back then, i loved it.
being able to do all the 'pro-toolsy' stuff on a zero budget with open source software was amazing.
jack, the linux audio concept underneath ardour is really stunning.
you can basically interconnect all audio/midi inputs and outputs of all hardware and software and have transports synced.
(rewire on steroids)

why did i ditch linux/ardour?
stopped doing the recording local bands thing.
for my own experiments i wanted to use vst's and midi and all that jazz.
guess nowadays i could do much of it in ardour too.

anyways, thanks for reminding me to give ardour a revisit...

 

because while it looks good in the screenshots it turns out to be the typical open source app perpetually in alpha or beta stage, on top of this it's not even free but just cheap, if it was as good as they claim there would be several cracked versions around and instead there's just one (v5.0) which i tried in the past.

it's a promising app, but considering the actual daw market i think they're not going anywhere, at best they can use it as a demo to licence their audio engine or their FX.
on linux they've more chance to succeed but who's using linux for pro audio anyway ? typically only a few guys in R&D and a bunch of open source zealots.

you can quickly see why it's not priced at least 49 or 99$, poor documentation (as always with open source apps !), beta stage, tons of updates and bugfixes (due to to tons of bugs)...

should this be the foundation upon you build your entire setup ? fuck nooo ... but there's no reason to not give it a try, today it's not yet a mature Daw but give it some time and ...

 

yes but it's the typical open-source scam, this was a FREE app and now they charge you 1$ thus breaking the original concept and making it de facto a commercial app and this changes everything, first of all it won't be 1$ for long, secondly in the moment you start to pay for it you expect it delivers and you expect decent documentation and all, which is not the case if we think of other shiny examples like GIMP or OpenOffice.

i'm fucking tired of all these "almost free" apps, either their truely free or they're not but they keep advertising them as if they were free to lure users and lock them in.

there's nothing wrong in Jack, Alsa, and linux audio in general, but making copycat apps full of bugs and with poor Docs ins't doing any good to their cause, the Daw market is very mature and already saturated, nobody need another player especially if in bad shape like Ardour, their only reason to exist is because it's maybe the best (and only) Daw for linux but there's not much to proud about that, who's using linux for serious composing anyway ?

 

I'm aware of Ardour development for the last 10 years or so. I managed to test it some time during 2009. Basically only WAV and MP3s were supported for import. The UI is unintuitive and lacks essential options, such as metronome and its customization.
On top, JACK is required which takes quite a bit of time to set up.

It's an interesting project, that's right, same as ReactOS, however I wouldn't rely on it.
REAPER takes similar route and offers 1000 times more options.

Actually, majority of open source apps are quite well documented.
Some featured picks - SoX, Liquidsoap, mocp, ...
Only exceptions are not-so-well documented - OpenMPT

What exactly is Ardour a copy of?

Well, there's always Bitwig. REAPER and OpenMPT run through Wine quite well

It's not nice move, that I agree with. However it's not very common, certainly not "typical".
Last time I checked, Black Mesa dev team did it and it totally backfired.

Depends on what you call SERIOUS composing. I prefer to have FUN time with composing primarily.
Serious is for lawyers and grown-ups.

You can still make great tunes on Linux. Just grab Milkytracker and load it with your favourite free samples.

 

Last edited: Dec 11, 2016

i use a lot of open source software but most of the cases they're small and medium-sized apps, that's where they excel at their job, little handy tools.
but for anything big, sorry that;s where the shit always hits the fan in my experience.

by the way, ReactOS is great ! unfortunately it's stuck in the typical OSS alpha-stage, Wine too is very far from being a working alternative, it doesn't even run Photoshop CC ...

Bitwig, i don't know, it looks good, kind of a copycat of Ableton, i will try it one day.

MilkTracker is probably the best tracker around, for those still tracking at least, i don't track since maybe 1987 and see no point to go back honestly, the whole concept behing Tracking is a piece of shit compared to any modern Daw, a relic from the analog sequencers of the 70s and 80s ! no reason to exist at all in 2016, i'm surprised it's still so popular, what's the point unless you're into Chipmusic ? and if so why not using the real deal like AHX on Amiga or a real C64 SID tracker ?

Black Mesa, of course it will always backfire, people realize it's a scam and that they're trapped and locked-in into an app that is leading nowhere.
one thing is offering free betas for hobbyists and enthusiasts, another thing is begging for money while giving you the same beta as before ... open source is tolerated just because it's free but once it has a price to pay people will expect a working product, nobody is gonna pay for a buggy beta and rightly so.

just look at the VST market, the products are so good now that you could build a decent setup just using the freebie plugins and VST provided by many commercial devs, no need to waste time using free VST made with Synthedit or whatever, plenty of good stuff from Voxengo and many others, not to mention the tons of free sample packs and libraries and you've also all the SF2/SFZ libraries.

it's amazing the amount of free stuff available today, that's why at this point even if you give your product away for free it means nothing, it must be also very good to stand out or nobody will bother.

 

I've been mentioning Ardour and talking it up on this forum since I joined, particularly when someone asks, "Which DAW(s) should I try?" or, "Anyone know any good DAW(s) that don't cost a lot?" I've watched Ardour grow, and am happy to see it fulfill its promise. It's developed by musicians and producers (like, real producers), and its community support is strong, rivaling Reaper's. Ardour's developers have never tried to pass their DAW off as "free" (as in "no-cost"), and have always charged (at least $1) for a fully-functional and -supported DAW – but if you can't cough-up a measly dollar for it, it's time to hock your computer. I use Ardour secondarily on OSX, but when Apple finally alienates me and I switch to Linux, it'll be Ardour and Bitwig for me there.

 

@Mixdowner I understand your point, although I don't share it. The "payment" obviously is not for the source code - you can grab it anytime free of charge. That's what "open source" means. And if projects like Ardour don't get monetary help, how do you think it would get to a point of being reliable? All the other DAWs are backed by millions of dollars, it's impressive how far Ardour has come without this backing.

So far, those who really worked with it didn't report any unreliability, so that might even be an arguable point, but I have no experiences and therefore can't say anything regarding this.

And about bugfixes: You don't really want to call it a negative point if a product regularly offers bugfixes, do you? Have a look at Reaper, hundreds of bugfix updates there - and I love it. I would rather count it as negative if there wouldn't be bugfixes for months, or even if I would have to pay for them!

Lastly, while it sounds reasonable regarding free plugins from commercial devs, it also limits you very much. Just because a dev isn't paid monthly, doesn't mean he's not good. There are products like Helm, that prove it. And also the other way 'round. Just because they are commercial doesn't make them any good. G-Sonique is a good example. All their plugs are created with Flowstone, and even more, they don't even work on them, they just grab modules that we share on the forum, connect them and sell them to people who think a good product is only good if it is commercial ;)

 

Bitwig is a real product, it's developed by a team, it costs money, it's tested and updated.
With Ardour you're on your own, you're trapped into a niche product, if shit happens they tell you to fix it yourself.

 

I tried Harrison Mixbus aka Ardour's twin for a few times in quest for a new daw. I think I can exchange my views as both are similar (?).
I liked the simple and inspiring gui. I also liked the mixing board very much which was the strength of Mixbus. If not exaggeration, the best mixing console view. But there was a lot missing like midi functions (even some basic), multi-timbral routing like for kontakt - last I checked and read on forums log time ago it was not there and company was not interested in making Mixbus a midi daw. What put me off the most is it's time consuming loading time when you first click, kinda bloat-ware. May be new versions are fine with all what I wrote. I am interested to try it again.

 

Ardour will end up like THE GIMP, there's no way out until they start asking at least 50$ bucks per download.
But they can't, as their product is still in beta stage with poor documentation and since it's quite complex you can bet there's a shitload of bugs, not to mention it's multiplatform so you can expect further issues depending on your OS.

Seriously, what did they expect ? they jumped into a market which is already oversaturated and mature, they've no business model, they started on linux and then spread out to OSX and Win without making sure of having the needed resources to manage all this, now they're probably struggling to complete all the features and the more they code the more bugs pop up everywhere and they realize they've just not enough people to fix everything, let alone reach a mature stage of development.

Strictly speaking, this is typical of open source stuff, they embark in too much ambititious projects and they end up abandoned sooner or later due to lack of money and resources.
Gimp, Wine, OpenOffice, Ardour, and the list goes on and on.

FlowStone : it's dead too, and it was commercial, it's a shame it was the BEST option for visual-programming on VST, now the only 64bit alternative is SynthEdit 1.2 which is in alpha stage since 2 years, developed by a single coder in his spare time, his web site looks like a Geocities page in 1996 ...

now, THIS is indeed a market niche that open source devs should fill but so far i haven't seen anything, at least not for VST3 and 64bits, i can only guess that it's a very poor market niche, which would explain why SynthMaker was disbanded and later resold as FlowStone and never updated to 64bits ? time will tell but it gives you an idea of how hard it's the audio market nowadays.

G-Sonique won't stay in biz for long, they're stuck with 32bit plugins in 2016 and there's nothing they can do as they're made with FlowStone ... sorry but once again they bet their ass on a failed platform, see my rants about why using the industry standards and blah blah blah.