There are several ways of starting Ardour, which may vary depending on which platform you are using it.

• double-click the Ardour icon in your platform's file manager (e.g. Nautilus on Linux, Finder on OS X)
• double click on an Ardour session file in your platform's file manager
• on Linux, you can also start Ardour on the command line (see below)

When Ardour is run for the very first time, a special dialog is displayed that will ask you several questions about your setup. You will not be asked these questions again, but you can always modify your choices via the Edit > Preferences dialog.

If you want to use JACK, in general, it is sensible to start it before you run Ardour. This is not necessary, but will provide you with more control and options over JACK's operation. You can start JACK through its CLI, or using a GUI program, like QjackCtl or Cadence.

If you open Ardour without specifying an existing session it will display the Session > New… dialog and the Audio/MIDI Setup dialog. See New/Open Session Dialog for a description of those dialogs.

Starting Ardour From the Command Line (Linux)

Like (almost) any other program on Linux, Ardour can be started on the command line. Type the following command in a terminal window:

To start Ardour with an existing session:

replacing /path/to/session with the actual path to your session. You can specify either the session folder or any session file inside the folder, including snapshots.

To start Ardour with a new, named session: