The Clips browser provides a way to easily reuse little pieces of music across sessions. You can also drop audio and MIDI clips on a timeline in the Editor window or use them in trigger slots in the Cue window.
In the Editor window, the Clips browser is part of the Editor sidebar and thus can be hidden from the main window. In the Cue window, the Clips browser is an essential part of the workflow and is always visible.
The Clips browser has three main parts:
The Clips browser is capable of handling multiple locations of clips and loops. There are several types of locations suported by the browser:
The Clips browser will provide access to all supported media file types available in a selected location. Typically those would be, WAV, FLAC, and MID files.
If there are subfolders in the clip library's folder, the Clips browser will display them using as a tree view. The browser will also lazy-load subfolders: instead of loading the entire list of all supported files in the library location, it will only display top-level folders and load their content when you start expanding subfolders you are interested in.
The preview section has simple playback controls as well as an option to automatically play back a clip when you click it in the list. For MIDI clips, you can also select a virtual instrument (Ardour defaults to ACE Reasonable Synth).
When playing a clip, Ardour will automatically pause the transport and resume playback when the clip playback is done. Ardour will also use the audition channel for playback, so you can control the preview volume using the monitor level control in the Monitor section of the Mixer.