Information for OS X native (X11-free) users
Right Click!
Ardour has been written with the assumption that you have (at least) a 2 button mouse available. There is a lot of useful functionality built into context menus that appear when you right-click on most objects.
If you are using an Apple laptop that appears to have only a single button, you should use Apple icon -> System Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse ->Trackpad to set the touchpad into "two-finger tap = right click" mode. Then you can get access to the context menus and more by just tapping with two fingers instead of one.
Note that you will find Ardour (and other digital audio workstations) even easier to use if you spend a little money on a full 3 button USB mouse with a mousewheel. They are cheap, easy to use and will all work with your MacBook.
Background: lots of people think that ctrl-click is always the way to get right-click operation on OS X. Its not. This is simply a per-application convention that many apps (but not all) have used. ctrl-click does not send the program something that looks like a right-click, it sends it a normal click with the additional information that the ctrl key is pressed. Some apps have used this as the signal to do some of the same things that right-click is associated with. Ardour has its own independent uses for ctrl-click, so we require to you configure your system to send a genuine right-click in order to see context menus and more.
Making sure you have a duplex audio device (INTEL USERS ONLY)
Until very recently, every Mac came with an audio interface that was preconfigured to do playback and recording at the same time. With the introduction of Intel-based Macs, and Tiger (OS X 10.4), Apple changed all that, for reasons that remain unclear. The builtin audio device on Macs using Intel processors no longer comes configured to do playback and capture at the same time. This odd decision by Apple has not affected many (or even most) 3rd party audio interfaces - most professional and prosumer devices come ready to be used for both purposes at the same time. However, some cheaper consumer devices have also ended up with playback or capture support, but not both at the same time.
Luckily, you can change this.
You must perform these steps as a user with administrative priviledges. The first thing to do is to open up Applications -> Utilities -> Audio/MIDI Setup. Go to the main menu bar, click on Audio and then select Open aggregate device editor. Follow the simple instructions to add the builtin playback and capture devices to your new aggregate device. You will need a name for the new device: "Builtin" is as good as any, but the choice is not important. You're done, and ready to use JACK.
The rest of this document applies to Intel and PPC systems
You need to know JACK
Although we do plan to make Ardour available without the need for any additional downloads, this release continues to require that you have JACK (the JACK Audio Connection Kit) installed on your system (you might be wondering just what on earth JACK is). The simplest way to do this is to visit the JackOSX website and install the package from there. Make sure you have version 0.76 or newer.
Note that you are not required to have JACK running when you start Ardour. Later, if you need access to the kinds of control that applications like JackPilot (part of JackOSX) offer, you can choose to have it running before starting Ardour. In general, this only matters if you want to connect other CoreAudio applications to Ardour.
The Basics
You should have been able to download the .zip file, and should have ended up with the striking red Ardour logo on your desktop. Clicking on that icon should start up Ardour, but ...
Slow Startup
The very first time you run Ardour, it will take roughly 2 to 3 times as long to get started on a session as it will subsequently. This is because the user interface code has to build a catalog of the system fonts, something which only happens once. Ardour will post a warning message about this, but we want to warn you ahead of time about this alarming delay.
In general application startup on OS X seems startlingly slow compared to Linux. Ardour is no exception to this. We continue to work on ways to reduce its launch time.
Plugins
This release of Ardour includes 117 LADSPA plugins. You will also be able to use the 20 or so default AudioUnit plugins supplied by Apple, along with any other AU plugins that you may have installed. Please note that AU plugin GUIs ("editors") are essentially unusable at this time, which is why we have still not released the native version of Ardour "officially" yet.
Known Current Issues
Although we are releasing the native version, we don't consider it really "finished". It is useful, reliable and it works, but most people will probably encounter some issues fairly easily. Although the vast majority of the interface works just as well (and in a few areas, better) than the X11 version, there are a few particular things that are still not quite right. We hope to fix these all ASAP:
- there can be issues at startup with ardour's editor window not having keyboard or even mouse focus. You can fix this by clicking on another application (finder will do) and then go back to Ardour.
- on Leopard, ardour will sometimes fail to startup
- when dragging a region from the region list to the tracks, its name is displayed upside down
- There is no drag-n-drop reordering within any treeview/lists. This means that you cannot reorder tracks or mixer strips at this time.
- Scrolling up and down in the main editor area with a mousewheel can cause unpleasant screen artifacts and is often very slow.
- Window resizing is unpleasant (though it does work fine)
- It is not possible to click in the track/channel mapping of the export dialog to set up which track is mapped to which channel. This has been fixed and will appear in another release; meanwhile, the workaround is either to use Alt-click or click and then press return.
- if you install Ardour as anyone other than the user who will run Ardour, you will get small boxes everywhere instead of text. This has also been fixed and will be released very soon; meanwhile, either install as the user who will run Ardour, or make Ardour2.app/Contents/Resources group writable, which will fix this for all users in the group that owns Ardour2.app. If that last line sounds like gobbledygook to you, you probably don't have this problem.
It doesn't work!
Please see our page on how to report a bug. BUT before you do, please keep the following two extra pieces of information in mind:- If you are having problems starting Ardour, is a good idea to open the Console (Applications -> Utilities -> Console). That way, error output and other information from startup will be visible.
- Always enable the system Crash Logger. This way you can collect useful information if Ardour is crashing. We will that information in any bug report you might file.