After shuttling back and forth between commercial, academic and research programming jobs (EMBL, Schlumberger, Rabbit Software, ScenicSoft, University of Washington CS&E) for 12 years, being the 2nd employee at Amazon.com (and then quitting) Paul Davis (Galisteo, NM) finally had the chance to start writing the kind of software he wanted to write in the way he wanted to write it.

Record, Edit, and Mix on Linux, macOS and Windows. Ardour's core user group: people who want to record, edit, mix and master audio and MIDI projects. When you need complete control over your tools, when the limitations of other designs get in the way, when you plan to spend hours or days working on a session, Ardour is there to make things work the way you want them to.

Ardour is licensed under the GNU Public License v2

Musicians: Being the best tool to record talented performers on actual instruments has always been a top priority for Ardour. Rather than being focused on electronic and pop music idioms, Ardour steps out of the way to encourage the creative process to remain where it always has been: a musician playing a carefully designed and well built instrument.

Soundtrack Editors: Sample accurate sync and shared transport control with video playback tools allows Ardour to provide a fast and natural environment for creating and editing soundtracks for film and video projects.

Composers: Arrange audio and MIDI using the same tools and same workflow. Use external hardware synthesizers or software instruments as sound sources. From sound design to electro-acoustic composition to dense multitrack MIDI editing, Ardour can help.