There are two primary ways to bring data into Ardour: recording it within a session from a live sound source or importing pre-existing audio files. This section covers the various ways to import audio into a session.

Importing and embedding are two different methods of using existing audio files on your computer (or network file system) within a session. They differ in one key respect: Importing An existing audio file is copied to the session's sounds folder, and is converted into the session's native format (WAVE or Broadcast WAVE depending on your choice) and sample rate. Embedding An existing audio file is used as a the source for a region, but is not copied or modified in any way.

The list of audio file formats that Ardour can import/embed is quite long. It is based on the functionality offered by libsndfile, an excellent and widely used software library by Australian programmer Erik de Castro Lopo. As libsndfile's capabilities expand, so will Ardour's abilities to import (and export) new formats. Ogg/Vorbis (an excellent, unpatented and license free audio compression format similar to MP3) is planned for the near future. Currently, supported formats include: Microsoft WAV SGI/Apple AIFF/AIFC Sun AU/Snd Raw (headerless) Paris Audio File (PAF) Commodore IFF/SVX Sphere/NIST WAV IRCAM SF Creative VOC SoundForge W64 GNU Octave MAT4.4 Portable Voice Format Fasttracker 2 XI HMM Tool Kit HTK Sample encodings supported include: Unsigned and signed 8, 16, 24 and 32 bit PCM IEEE 32 and 64 floating point U-LAW A-LAW IMA ADPCM MS ADPCM GSM 6.10 G721/723 ADPCM 12/16/24 bit DWVW OK Dialogic ADPCM 8/16 DPCM

When you want to use existing audio files in an Ardour session, the first choice you need to make is whether you want to bring the files in as tracks or as new regions. Consider the two following scenarios: you have an 8 track recording of existing material, with 1 audio file per track you have a sample library containing 500 small audio files In the first case, your goal is probably to have 8 tracks (at least), with each track containing a single audio file. In the second case, its a lot more likely that you simply want to be able to use any of the samples easily, but do not want any tracks created as a direct result of the import/embed. It is very important that you understand this distinction: many new users think there should be a "simple" way to import existing audio without understanding that the goal of importing/embedding is not always the same. Ardour provides two different options when importing. You can import/embed audio files as new tracks, or you can import/embed them into the region list, where they will be available as regions to put into new or existing tracks. You can also insert import/embed audio files directly into an existing track.

Click on the Edit item in the editor's menu bar. From the popup menu that appears, choose Import ...as new tracks . The Audio Library/File Chooser window will appear. After you have made your selection of files to import, click the button at the bottom of that window (it will say something like "Import selected regions as new tracks").

If you use a file manager such as Nautilus or Konqueror ((basically, any tool that uses standard "list-of-URL's" encoding for drag-n-drop)), the simplest method to import files as tracks is to drag-n-drop. Select the files you want to embed in the file manager, drag the selection into Ardour and drop it over an area of the editor's track/arrange display where there are no tracks. The files will be embedded as 1 new track per file.

Click on the Edit item in the editor's menu bar. From the popup menu that appears, choose Embed ...as new tracks . The Audio Library/File Chooser window will appear. After you have made your selection of files to embed, click the button at the bottom of that window (it will say something like "Embed selected regions as new tracks"). 1 new track will be created for each file.

Begin by clicking on the titlebar of the region list in the editor window. Select Import from the menu that appears, and the Sound File Database will be displayed. See sfdb for more details on using this dialog. Once you have found and selected the files you want to import, click the "Import Selected" button on the SFDB dialog. Each selected audio file will be copied into the session's sounds folder, converted into the session's native format and sample rate. One or more new regions will be placed in the "External" section of the region list, either one per channel of each file or, if "create multichannel regions" was selected in the SFBD dialog, one per file. If you use Nautilus as your file manager, you can easily import files into your project by dragging them onto the desired track, then releasing the mouse button. The file will then be embedded into your session. At this time, no control over the conversion process is offered. If sample rate conversion is required, it will be carried out at the highest quality that Ardour can provide. This means that it can be rather slow (many minutes to import an audio file lasting a few minutes).

There are two pathways for embedding an audio file into a session. One is initiated from the region list, and simply creates one or more new regions. The other is initiated from a specific track, and not only adds regions to the region list, but also inserts them into the track's playlist.

click with 1 on the region list title bar. Select Import audio file from the menu that appears. The SFDB dialog appears. Select the files you want to import then click on the Embed Selected button. New regions are added to the External section of the region list.

in the track you want to add the audiofile to.The track context menu will appear. Select EditInsert external sndfile from this menu. The SFDB dialog appears. Select the files you want to import then click on the Embed Selected button. New regions are added to the "External" section of the region list, and one is inserted into the track from which the embed was started.