In order for Ardour to be able to do anything at all, you need JACK to be running. See Section 2.2, “Getting Audio In, Out and Around Your Computer” for more details on how to start and configure JACK.

The first step in starting a new project with Ardour is to create a new session. When you do this, Ardour creates a new folder named after your session, and stores differents kinds of files and subfolders within it. The two most important subfolders are sounds which contains all the audio recorded or imported for the session and automation which contains automation data for various parts of the session.

When you start ardour without specifying an existing session, it automatically brings up the new session dialog. If you want to create a new session at other times, choose Session → New Session.

Enter a name for the new session. You can use any characters you like as part of the name, but you should know that more or less anything other than alphabetic and numeric characters will be converted to underscores to form the name of the session folder.

Next, choose where you want to store the new session folder. If its not in your current working folder, click on the browse button to expand the file selector, and then navigate to your desired location.

2.1.2.1. Input and Output Configuration

Next, configure the basic IO setup for the session. You have several choices here, and doing nothing is one of them. This will give you a session that includes:

• a stereo master bus with its outputs connected to the first two outputs of your audio interface

• all new track will have their outputs sent to the master bus

• all new track inputs will be connected to Ardour’s best guess at the relevant input of your audio interface.

However, if you want more control over this, click on the expander next to Advanced options label to show the full set of options:

There are two options available for track input configuration: autoconnect or manual. If you select autoconnect (the default) then new tracks will be connected to an input of your audio interface. If you select manual, it will be up to you to configure the input for each track.

For output, the first two choices are whether to have control and master outs. Most DAWs assume the presence of master outs, and few (if any) offer control outs.

2.1.2.1.1. Master Outputs

A Master out is a bus to which all (or most) tracks and other busses send their output. It provides a convenient single point of control for the output of ardour, and is a typical location for global effects. Because of this, using master outs is enabled by default, and the master out bus is setup to be stereo (2 inputs, 2 outputs). However, if you are feeding Ardour’s output through a hardware mixing console, you may not want master outs. In such cases, disable them by clicking on the radio button next to “Use master outs”. Alternatively, you may want some other channel configuration for the master output (for example, 8 channel surround sound). Select this by using the clickbox (see clickboxes) next to the radio button.

2.1.2.1.2. Control Outputs

Control outs are unusual for DAWs, but because Ardour is designed to be as flexible as possible, and in particular is intended to be useful as a live mixer, they are included here. Using control outs provides you with a dedicated bus to which all tracks have an additional output connection. As well as feeding their regular outputs, they send data to the control outs as well. In an unadjusted session, this means that the control outs carry the same signal as the master outs. However, once you start soloing tracks, the control outs will carry only soloed tracks while the master outs continue to carry the entire mix. A typical use of control outs is when doing live stage work. The mix engineer will be listening to the control outs, and can therefore solo tracks without affecting the signal being sent to the master outs (the main speakers).

You can open a session by either

When specifying a session to open you can either specify the session folder or the session file. If you specify the folder, Ardour will open the primary session file within the folder. If you specify a session file (see Section 2.1.4.2, “Snapshots”), Ardour will open that particular session.

Ardour will save your session every time you add a new track/bus, and after every capture. Saving regularly at other times will help ensure that your work is preserved on your disk drive.

Ardour allows you to create templates that specify the number of tracks and busses, the I/O configuration and other aspects of the session. When creating a new session, you can specify a template and it will be created to match the template settings. To create a template, you will need to be working on an existing session. Make sure that the session is setup to in exactly the way you would like the template to be. Choose Session → Save Template.

To open the Save Template dialog enter a name for the template and click Save or Ctrl+S to store the template using the current session configuration. Templates are basically session files without any audio data references. They are stored in your .ardour folder.

Ardour only allows you to work on one session at a time (although your computer may be able to run multiple instances of Ardour at one time). This means that to work on a different session than the current one, you will be forced to close the current session. You can either

Whenever a session is closed but has been modified since last saved, the Save dialog will appear.

You have three options when this dialog appears:

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Cleanup looks for audio files that were recorded by ardour for this session, but are no longer in use. "In use" means "present in any playlist in any snapshot of the session". If you have unused playlists (e.g. alternate takes) cleanup will volunteer to delete them for you. then it will search all snapshots (including the one you are working with), and move all unused captured audio files into the "dead_sounds" directory within the session. At this point, you could still potentially get material that was "cleaned up" back, though its quite tricky to do.

It is advisable, even firmly recommended that after this cleanup step, you save the session, exit ardour and restart. This will enable you to confirm that the session still works as expected. If all goes well (and it should), you can then do the 2nd phase cleanup, which will remove the files from the dead_sounds directory (at which point, the material is not recoverable without backups on your part).

Note that the presence of snapshots can cause user confusion, as in "why didn’t cleanup do anything?" The answer is frequently that there are all capture audio files are in use in this snapshot or in others.