If you want to add some on purpose, do this later during editing when you can control it. Watch your recording levels because you do not want distortion.

This is because the recording level was too loud, which causes clipping, which creates distortion. The input level indicator on the Editor Mixer directly underneath the Solo button is red, and there are red marks in the waveform. Figure 5 shows a recording session in action. Click the Stop Playback button to stop recording. Now click the Play button to start recording. Click the red button, and it should start blinking. Click on the track panel to make it the active panel, make noise, and you should see something like Figure 4.Īll righty then, let’s make a recording! There is a red button up on the Transport Menu, next to a green-lit button, which is the Stop Playback button. Now you have a decibel scale and other controls. If everything is set up correctly you’ll see a tiny vertical volume meter on the right edge of the track panel, like in Figure 3.Ī better way to monitor recording levels is to expose the Editor Mixer, so if it’s not already visible click View > Show Editor Mixer. Next, click the red button on your new mono track to start the recording level monitor, and start making noise.

I like to give tracks descriptive names, which you can do by clicking on the track name and typing a new one. Now you have a Master bus and an Audio 1 track. Click Session > Add Track/Bus, and then add one mono track in Normal mode. You might put all backing vocals on one bus, or all bassoons, or alpenhorns, or what-have-you, and then apply edits to the whole group at once.Ī bus is no good without some tracks, so let’s add a single mono track. What is a bus, you ask? An audio bus, whether hardware or software, is for grouping tracks. See the Master bus? You will always have a Master bus. There you are, the default Ardour screen in a stylin’ dark theme. Go back to the New Session tab, click New, and you should see something like Figure 2. Don’t change anything on the Audio Setup tab, with one exception: if you have more than one audio interface, for example an internal sound card and a USB audio interface, then pick the one you want to use from the Interface selector. The Open Session tab is for opening existing projects. What the heck do you do with that? Not much, really! First fill in the Name field this is your project name, something clever and descriptive like “test”. Let’s fire up Ardour without starting JACK first and see what happens: You can start JACK first and tweak the settings, or start Ardour and let it start JACK for you. How use PulseAudio and JACK? will help you sort it out. JACK and Pulseaudio often clash, depending on your distro and how old it is. Pulseaudio is also an audio router, so it’s redundant with JACK. ALSA provides sound card drivers and a basic mixer, and JACK does the routing. I am not a fan of Pulseaudio for audio production because it gets in my way. I’m using Ubuntu Studio 10.04 LTS because everything works and I plan to keep it that way. Fedora with the CCRMA packages is a great audio platform, and so is Ubuntu. If it isn’t with your distro, then install it separately. When you install Ardour JACK should be a dependency. With JACK you can have Hydrogen playing and recording at the same time you play your guitar, and have individual control over routing all inputs, outputs, and monitoring channels. A simple example is recording a single instrument, say a guitar, and using the wonderful Hydrogen software drumkit for a backing track. With JACK you can fine-tune latency and throughput, connect software audio applications, and connect audio hardware in all different ways. (In an amazing coincidence, my “Book of Audacity” has a chapter on using JACK.) JACK is a real-time low-latency audio router. If you’re going to use Linux for serious audio production then you must become well-acquainted with JACK. JACK, the Jack Audio Connection Kit, is required to run Ardour. You will need a computer with a sound card, even a cheapo on-board chip, and a microphone or instrument to plug in to your sound card. Follow along as we learn the basics by making a simple recording. Ardour is one of the shining jewels of FOSS, a robust professional-level multi-channel recorder, editor, and mixer. When you’re ready to move up from simple audio recording applications like GNOME’s Sound Recorder, take a look at the excellent Ardour digital audio workstation.

Ardour audio