MIDI is a way to describe music data and to control music hardware and software. Ardour can import and record MIDI data, and perform a variety of editing operations on it. Furthermore, MIDI can be used to control various functions of Ardour.
Ardour does not include a synthesis engine to produce audio
from MIDI data, but relies on plugins or external hard- and software
for the task. This can be a stumbling block for first time users who
expect MIDI input to result in audio output by default.
Please see the section on working with plug-ins for more information on
turning MIDI data into audio output.
Ardour supports various ways of sending and receiving MIDI data:
CoreMIDI is the standard MIDI framework on OSX systems. It provides drivers for MIDI hardware and libraries needed by MIDI software clients.
ALSA MIDI is the standard MIDI framework on Linux systems. It provides drivers for MIDI hardware and libraries needed by MIDI software clients.
The QJackCtl control software displays ALSA MIDI ports under its "ALSA" tab (it does not currently display CoreMIDI ports).
JACK MIDI is a framework used to comunicate between JACK MIDI software clients. It provides zero jitter and a fixed latency of one period, the same latency as for JACK audio.
JACK MIDI ports show up under the MIDI tab in QJackCtl.
There are several ways of bridging between the native MIDI frameworks (e.g. CoreMIDI or ALSA) and JACK MIDI, as described in the sections below.
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