Sounds like a Revolution

Ardour is not just a digital audio workstation. Let's compare it with an automobile.

Imagine that you bought a car and were told that the manufacturer was the only place you could get it fixed. None of your friends are allowed to use the car, and there's a good chance that it won't work on certain kinds of roads. As for customizing it: neither you nor your car-wise friends could do anything, because the hood is welded shut ...

If this sounds a little odd, that's because it is. But if you already own a digital audio workstation, you know all about products that work this way. Only the company that created it can fix it. Only that company can improve it. The company doesn't trust you as a customer, requiring product activation keys and hardware dongles. The list of inconviences goes on and on.

A New Approach

Ardour is here to fix all this. How?

a screenshot of a full ardour session

No Copy Protection

We'd like you to pay for Ardour - we've put a lot of work into it, and we'd like to keep doing that (you can use that PayPal button over there on the right). But whether you pay for Ardour or not, you are welcome to make copies for your friends. Hopefully, they'll want to pay for it too. No dongles, no activation keys, only trust.

Open Development Process

Anyone can participate in the development of Ardour. Because everyone can get the source code, Ardour will continue to be developed and supported with or without the involvement of its original authors. Contrast this to the collapse of a company, or a discontinued product. Moreover, anyone with programming skills can add features to Ardour, or fix problems.

Platform-Neutral Technology

Ardour will can be ported to just about any system that complies with the POSIX operating system standard. It has already been ported to Mac OS X with very few changes.

Rather than being a product of a particular company, it's a center around which a community can focus its interest and effort. A program for which new releases can happen as often as necessary to bring new functionality and improvements. A program to build the future with.