Ardour
Free multitrack recording and mixing studio for music and podcasts, with MIDI, automation and plugin support.
Our verdict
Ardour is the closest thing Linux has to a traditional recording studio on a computer. If your work is recording real instruments, voice or a podcast, and then editing and mixing it, this does the whole job and does it well.
It is not a beat-making program. There are almost no built-in instruments or loops, so someone coming from FL Studio will find it empty until they add their own sounds. Someone coming from Pro Tools or Cubase will recognise the shape of it much faster.
Two things to know about getting it. The Ardour project asks for a payment for the ready-made download on its own website, which is how the developers are paid. The copy in Linux app stores is free, and the Flathub listing is packaged by the community rather than by the Ardour developers. Your old project files will not open here, no matter which route you take. Finished audio files, WAV and MP3, import without any trouble.
What's good
- Full multitrack recording, editing and mixing at no cost
- Handles audio and MIDI in the same project
- Supports Linux plugin formats including LV2, LADSPA and VST
- Built by and for Linux audio, so it behaves properly with Linux sound systems
What to know first
- The layout is dense and takes real effort to learn
- Comes with very few instruments and sounds of its own, so you add those separately
- Cannot open project files from FL Studio, Ableton Live or Cubase
- The version on the Ardour website asks for a payment, and the Flathub build is packaged by the community rather than by the Ardour developers
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak)
Windows apps it can replace
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