There are two primary ways to bring data into Ardour: recording it within a session from a live sound source or importing pre-existing audio files. This section covers the various ways to import audio into a session.
Importing and embedding are two different methods of using existing audio files on your computer (or network file system) within a session. They differ in one key respect:
An existing audio file is copied to the session's sounds folder, and is converted into the session's native format (WAVE or Broadcast WAVE depending on your choice) and sample rate. At this time, no control over the conversion process is offered. If sample rate conversion is required, it will be carried out at the highest quality that Ardour can provide. This means that it can be rather slow (many minutes to import an audio file lasting a few minutes).
An existing audio file is used as a the source for a region, but is not copied or modified in any way.