FLOSS Weekly 86

FLOSS Weekly Episode 86

FLOSS Weekly 86: Ardour

Ardour, the digital audio workstation and recording software.

Guest

Paul Davis from Ardour

Topics

Ardour is a Digital Audio Workstation, which means it supports multitrack editing and recording.

• Composed of a back-end library (libardour) and front-end GUI (75% of the code)
• Not designed to be easy for new users to pickup, designed for audio engineers to be able to do the important things quickly and easily.
• Alternate front-end that was going to be more modular was in work, but abandoned
• Trying to figure out financial model...currently asks for voluntary purchase price
  • $0 is O.K.
  • Typically $10-$15
  • Around 3% of people actually pay anything
  • Trying to raise $54k a year to support the developer
• Open source funding model. Three major categories
  • Large, important functions (linux kernel, QT, etc.) are funded by corporations with a vested interest
  • Small single use items are supported by volunteers in the community just fine
  • Mid-size projects (Ardour, Gimp, Inkscape) need one or more full-time developers to really grow, but don't have any way of attracting funding

External Links

Paul mentioned this essay by Bryce about supporting Inkscape on Windows.

Ardour uses the Jack Audio Connection Kit to interface with audio devices.

Ardour supports Firewire audio hardware through the Free Firewire Audio Drivers project.

Sooper Looper -- a live looping sampler.

Sound Juicer -- a clean, mean, and lean CD ripper.

Production Information

• Recorded Date: September 9, 2009
• Release Date: September 12, 2009
• Duration: 1:09:12
• Log line:
• Edited by: Tony
• Notes: Used Prog 1 mixdown for editing.