manual/_manual/02_introducing-ardour/02_understanding-basic-concepts-and-terminology.html

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---
layout: default
title: Understanding Basic Concepts and Terminology
---
<p>
This section will help you get acquainted with the basic terminology and
concepts associated with Ardour. More detailed information on each aspect
of the program is provided in later chapters.
</p>
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<h2>Sessions</h2>
<p>
An <dfn>Ardour session</dfn> is a container for an entire project. A
session may contain an arbitrary number of <dfn>tracks</dfn> and
<dfn>busses</dfn> consisting of audio and <abbr title="Musical Instrument
Digital Interface">MIDI</abbr> data, along with
information on processing those tracks, a mix of levels, and everything
else related to the project. A session might typically contain a song, or
perhaps an entire album or a complete live recording.
</p>
<p>
Ardour sessions are held in directories; these directories contain one or
more <dfn>session files</dfn>, some or all of the audio and MIDI data and
a number of other state files that Ardour requires. The session file
describes the structure of the session, and holds automation data and
other details.
</p>
<p>
Ardour's session file is kept in
<abbr title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> format, which is
advantageous as it is somewhat human-readable, and human-editable in a
crisis. Sound files are stored in one of a number of optional formats, and
MIDI files as <abbr title="Standard MIDI File">SMF</abbr>.
</p>
<p>
It is also possible for Ardour sessions to reference sound and MIDI files
outside the session directory, to conserve disk space and avoid
unnecessary copying if the data is available elsewhere on the disk.
</p>
<p>
Ardour has a single current session at all times; if Ardour is started
without specifying one, it will offer to load or create one.
</p>
<p>
More details can be found at
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<a href="/working-with-sessions/">Working With Sessions</a>.
</p>
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<h2>Tracks</h2>
<p>
A <dfn>track</dfn> is a concept common to most
<abbr title="Digital Audio Workstation">DAWs</abbr>, and also used in
Ardour. Tracks can record audio or MIDI data to disk, and then replay
it with processing. They also allow the audio or MIDI data to be edited
in a variety of different ways.
</p>
<p>
In a typical pop production, one might use a track each for the kick
drum, another for the snare, more perhaps for the drum overheads and
others for bass, guitars and vocals.
</p>
<p>
Ardour can record to any number of tracks at one time, and then play
those tracks back. On playback, a track's recordings may be processed by
any number of plugins, panned, and its level altered to achieve a
suitable mix.
</p>
<p>
A track's type is really only related to the type of data that it stores
on disk. It is possible, for example, to have a MIDI track with a
synthesizer plugin which converts MIDI to audio. Even though the track
remains MIDI (in the sense that its on-disk recordings are MIDI), its
output may be audio-only.
</p>
<p>
More details can be found at
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<a href="/working-with-tracks/">Working With Tracks</a>.
</p>
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<h2 id="busses">Busses</h2>
<p>
<dfn>Busses</dfn> are another common concept in both DAWs and hardware
mixers. They are similar in many ways to tracks; they process audio or
MIDI, and can run processing plugins. The only difference is that their
input is obtained from other tracks or busses, rather than from disk.
</p>
<p>
One might typically use a bus to collect together the outputs of related
tracks. Consider, for example, a 3-track recording of a drum-kit; given
kick, snare and overhead tracks, it may be helpful to connect the output
of each to a bus called "drums", so that the drum-kit's level can be set
as a unit, and processing (such as equalisation or compression) can be
applied to the mix of all tracks. Such buses are also called
<dfn>groups</dfn>.
</p>
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<h2>Regions</h2>
<p>
A track may contain many segments of audio or MIDI. Ardour contains
these segments in things called <dfn>regions</dfn>, which are
self-contained snippets of audio or MIDI data. Any recording pass, for
example, generates a region on each track that is enabled for recording.
Regions can be subjected to many editing operations; they may be moved
around, split, trimmed, copied, and so on.
</p>
<p>
More details can be found at
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<a href="/working-with-regions/">Working With Regions</a>.
</p>
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<h2>Playlists</h2>
<p>
The details of what exactly each track should play back is described by a
<dfn>playlist</dfn>. A playlist is simply a list of regions; each track
always has an active playlist, and can have other playlists which can be
switched in and out as required.
</p>
<p>
More details can be found at
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<a href="/working-with-playlists/">Working With Playlists</a>.
</p>
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<h2>Plugins</h2>
<p>
Ardour allows you to process audio and MIDI using any number of
<dfn>plugins</dfn>. These are external pieces of code, commonly seen as
VST plugins on Windows or AU plugins on Mac OS X. Ardour supports
the following plugin standards:
</p>
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<dl class="wide-table">
<dt><abbr title="Linux Audio Developers' Simple Plugin API">LADSPA</abbr></dt>
<dd>the first major plugin standard for Linux. Many LADSPA plugins are
available, mostly free and open-source.</dd>
<dt><abbr title="LADSPA Version 2">LV2</abbr></dt>
<dd>the successor to LADSPA. Lots of plugins have been ported from
LADSPA to LV2, and also many new plugins written.</dd>
<dt><abbr title="Virtual Studio Technology">VST</abbr></dt>
<dd>Ardour supports VST plugins that have been compiled for Linux.</dd>
<dt><abbr title="Audio Units">AU</abbr></dt>
<dd>Mac OS X versions of Ardour support AudioUnit plugins.</dd>
</dl>
<p>
Ardour has some support for running Windows VST plugins on Linux, but
this is rather complicated, extremely difficult for the Ardour
developers to debug, and generally unreliable, as it requires to run a
large amount of Windows code in an emulated environment.<br />
If it is at all possible, you are strongly advised to use native
LADSPA, LV2 or Linux VST plugins on Linux, or AU on Mac OS X.
</p>
<p>
More details can be found at
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<a href="/working-with-plugins/">Working With Plugins</a>.
</p>