3 Building Blocks of Ardour

1	Tracks and Busses	2	Automation Tracks
3	Regions	4	Ranges

At the most fundamental level, there are several "building blocks" of the Ardour workflow.  Any use of Ardour will require a familiarity with these concepts.

3.1 Tracks and Busses

3.1.1 Overview

The left part of an audio track contains several informations and functions useful during a recording/mixing session:

The left part of an audio track or bus as pictured above is also known as the header.

Track name	The top black area filled up with alphanumeric symbols (in this case Audio1).
Gain fader	the strip just below the track name
Record button	the red dotted button to enable/disable recording on that track
Mute button	m
Solo button	s
Playlist button	p
Automation button	a
Edit Group button	g
Meter	the strip on the right side

3.1.2 Context Menu Options

Audio tracks have several options, which are accessible by a Right-Click on the track overview or the Track entry in the main menu.

Table 3-1: Track Header Context Menu

Height	Change the height of the track, which can also be changed by dragging the symbol
Color	Change the color of the regions in the track's playlist. An alternating default color is picked for every new track
Remote control ID	Defines the order of channels when they appear on an external controller (such as a MIDI fader controller)
Automation	Select which automation tracks are shown
Hide/Show all crossfades	Toggle display of crossfades of all regions in the track's playlist
Waveform	Draw waveforms logarithmic or linear; rectify waveforms or not
Alignment	Determines whether to align a recording with ardour's pre-recorded material (by accomodating delays in the playback delays) or not
Normal/Tape mode	See Tape mode for details
Active	Inactive tracks do not record, process or play back any audio
Hide	Hide this track from the Editor window
Remove	Delete this track, including all playlists, routing and plugins. Audio recorded on this track remains in the region list

3.1.3 Audio Tracks

The audio track is the most fundamental concept in a Digital Audio Workstation.  A typical track might be "kick drum", "lead vocal", "bass guitar", "sound effects", etc.

In a traditional analog recording studio, a track is a combination of a track on the tape, the tape machine playback/record head(s), and a mixing console strip.

An audio track is the place where audio is recorded into and played back from. The arrangement of regions of audio is stored in the track's playlist.  At any given time, every track has a playlist selected for it.  The playlist is the sequence of sound events ( regions) for the track.  Whenever something is recorded into the track, a new region is added to it. Of course you can move regions from one track to another, or change their position within the track.

Normally each track will have a single playlist.   For the majority of audio engineering projects, only one playlist per track is sufficient.  However, there are times when you may choose to have more playlists than tracks.  This concept is often called "Takes" or "Virtual Tracks" in other software.

To create a new track select the menu Add Track/Bus from the main menu or Right-Click on the empty area left below the master track (or any other tracks you created previously).  Either of these options will open the Add Track/Bus Dialog.

When a track is added to the session it is given a default name based on the Track type. For example, the first audio track that is added to the session will be given the name Audio 1 and the first bus will be called Bus 1 and any subsequently added tracks will be consecutively numbered.

Track names determine the names of the files created when recording to a track.  For example, the resulting file inside the session might be called "Audio 1.wav"

3.1.4 Audio Busses

An Audio Bus is similar to a Track, but it does not have the ability to record and play back audio.  Therefore buses have no playlists or regions associated with them.

In some use cases, a Bus is equivalent to a mixer console strip in the traditional analog recording studio.  In other use cases, the Bus is equivalent to the subgroups, auxiliary buses, or master buses of a traditional console.

Due to its nature it is missing the record button and the playlist button.

Typical use cases include:

• Post-processing of Audio Tracks:  one or more Audio Tracks are combined into the Audio Bus for level control, effects, or other processing.
• "Live" inputs which need to be automated or mixed along with other ardour tracks.  A live "voicover" microphone, MIDI synthesizers, or live performance inputs.
• Return paths for external gear such as reverbs or delays.

If you are using Ardour purely as a live "mixer", then you will use only Audio Busses and no Audio Tracks.  More typically, a Bus is used to sum several tracks into a single audio stream which may then be processed and then output again for listening or further processing.