Ardour's editor utilizes a <dfn>grid</dfn> to assist in the placement of regions on the timeline, or with editing functions that need to happen at a specific point in time. You can choose if you want the cursor and various objects to snap to this grid, and how you want the snapping to behave. You can modify the grid units to fit your needs.
There are two ways to think about aligning material to a grid. The first and most obvious one is where an object's position is clamped to grid lines. In Ardour, this is called <dfn>absolute snap</dfn> and is commonly used when working with sampled material where audio begins exactly at the beginning of a file, note or region.
The second, <dfn>relative snap</dfn>, is used when an object's position relative to the grid lines is important. In music, this allows you to move objects around without changing the "feel" (or timing) of a performance.
For common use patterns, it is recommended that you assign a unique key for one snap modifier and two keys for the other in such a way that they share an otherwise unused key. For example, you may choose the snap modifier to be the <kbdclass="mod2"> </kbd> key and the relative snap modifier to be the <kbdclass="mod2"> </kbd> and <kbdclass="mod4"> </kbd> keys.
In <kbdclass="menu">No Grid</kbd> mode, you may temporarily activate the grid by pressing the snap modifier (for absolute snap) or switch to relative snap by pressing the relative snap modifier.</dd>
<dd>activates normal snapping. All positions of objects snap to the grid. (See <ahref="#gridunits">Grid Units</a> below to change the grid). If you try to move an object in "Grid"-mode, it does not change its position until you move the mouse far enough for the object to reach the next grid line.</br>
Sometimes you may wish to maintain an objects' position relative to the grid line. In order to do this, use the "snap relative" modifier. When holding down this modifier during a drag, the dragged object will jump while maintaining its original distance from the line.</br>
<dd>is a less strict type of snapping. Objects can still be moved to any position, but positions close to the relative or absolute grid points will snap. In order to move an object very close to a snap point, it may be necessary to zoom in to prevent snapping to that point, or to use the snap modifier to disable snap completely.</br>
As with Grid mode, the snap modifier will disable snap completely while the absolute snap modifier will move the "notch" of Magnetic snap to the grid lines.</dd>
By default, a region's beginning will be used as the reference for both types of snapping, but you can change this behaviour by setting a <dfn>sync point</dfn> in the region. Select the region(s) and press <kbd>V</kbd>. This will set the sync point to your edit point.
<dd>These are absolute time units, unaffected by sample rate or timecode settings</dd>
<dt><kbdclass="menu">Beats/N</kbd></dt>
<dd>Set the grid to units of 1/N beats, where N can be 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. The duration of a grid unit will depend on the tempo and meter in effect at that point in the timeline.</dd>
<dt><kbdclass="menu">Beats</kbd></dt>
<dd>Set the grid to whole beats. The duration of a grid unit will depend on the tempo and meter in effect at that point in the timeline.</dd>
<dt><kbdclass="menu">Bars</kbd></dt>
<dd>Set the grid to whole bars. The duration of a grid unit will depend on the tempo and meter in effect at that point in the timeline.</dd>
If you are moving items on a track, and only the current track is selected, then you will only be able to snap to other regions on the same track. This means that enabling <kbdclass="menu">Edit > Preferences > Editor > Link Selections of Regions and Tracks</kbd> will make the "Region" grid unit unusable. Avoid the use of this option if you are going to use any of the Region grid units.
