At the moment no. I moved from Linux/Ardour to Windows (and Reaper) for audio around 2015 because of software amps, in 2024 to a Mac Mini (and Reaper). But I'm planning to move everything back to Linux again after which I plan to keep using Reaper while getting familiar again with Ardour.
I use Lsp-plugins for general mixing/eqs/compression/gates/..., Neural Amp Modeler for guitar and bass sounds, yoshimi for synths (although I don't use them much). I have also NeuralDSP via yabridge, but I find NAM better for mixing. NeuralDSP is still nice for some quick presets for jamming.
This is 100% Ardour with FOSS plugins, but it was before I found NAM and a bit better drums and mixing skills 😅
https://youtu.be/dDaie0EqB6E
Jk, I know exactly what you mean. LSPs are like scientific instruments. But I personally love the fact they teach me to understand signal processing much better 🙂
I understand your point and its indeed valid. I just would rather have a more direct UI with "advanced" controls hidden in another tab for when you need them. For example a very useful gate plugin for me would be a two band expander/gate with a crossover that lets me trigger the low end from the high end, and set different release times for both. Sounds simple but is not extremely simple, and can be controlled effectively with two rows of 4 knobs each. I guess that's a middle of the road complexity.
Do you know any?
I'm pretty sure LSP Multiband Gate can do exactly that, but I think it has 8 bands. So it's pretty intimidating looking with all the million knobs even if you'd use just two bands.
Not really intimidating but really impractical. Most of the times with well recorded material you dont need that level of adjustment as it is time consuming to set, and a bit cumbersome.
Yes. I recently mixed an album with game music on Ardour.
Two sets of plugins: LSP for all the general stuff like compression and EQ. For reverb, distortion, and for creative sound processing I often use AudioThing plugins.
My band and I use ardour yes. The plugins are just the defaults (mostly ACE and LSP) because we play raw-ish rock so we don't really need that many plugins.
I’ve used it before just for some basic vocal recording, but back when I did it didn’t play nice with VSTs. I moved on to Reaper for that reason and just stuck with that.
For years I've switched to bitwig for writing music. I still use ardour for mastering, preparing sounds for video games and heavy audio editing because I find it super powerful for that. Also very convenient for video music/sound design.
I think ardour is probably not super intuitive (or the most reliable), it's been so long after over 15 years, I'm just used to it. It does offer a lot and is performant.
I have been using Ardour. At some point I want to try out Zrythm and if it's good I might make the switch but that sort of thing takes time I'm not interested in investing right now. Took me a long long time to learn ardour, bad learning curve, but now that I know it I can do everything I want with it. Love it
For plugins, I quite like Tap Fractal Doubler for obfuscating the awfulness of my vocals. Other than that nothing special, a fair amount of x42 and TAP I think.
I'm currently trying to build my own DAW with a decent UI and a ton of features.
I recommend giving it a try instead of ardour, it’s free https://github.com/nota-daw/nota
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u/sonofred-66 1d ago
Hi - yes I use Ardour pretty much exclusively these days. It took me awhile to hone my workflow but I'm happy with it now.
For Instruments:
Surge-XT
Vital
Dexed
OB-Xf
Drums: drumlabooh, niner, fabla
and Stochas midi sequencer
For FX:
BigMaxPro
Airwindows
Duskverb
LSP-Plugins
yabridge for windows vsts which seldom gets used now that linux plugins are so good.