Ardour
Ardour is a free, open-source audio and music app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Ardour is a digital audio workstation for recording, editing and mixing multi-track audio and MIDI on Linux, macOS and Windows. It has 5,324 GitHub stars and is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license, and people use it instead of GarageBand and Ableton Live.
- Official
- Linux
- macOS
- Windows
- Audio & music production
- Actively maintained
About Ardour
Ardour is a digital audio workstation for recording, editing and mixing multi-track audio and MIDI on Linux, macOS and Windows. Please see the Ardour website at for all documentation.
Replaces
Commercial software people commonly use Ardour instead of.
- GarageBand
- Ableton Live
- FL Studio
- Pro Tools
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What is Ardour?
Ardour is a free, open-source audio and music app for Windows, macOS and Linux. Ardour is a digital audio workstation for recording, editing and mixing multi-track audio and MIDI on Linux, macOS and Windows. It has 5,324 GitHub stars and is released under the GPL-2.0-or-later license, and people use it instead of GarageBand and Ableton Live.
Is Ardour free and open source?
Yes. Ardour's source code is public on GitHub under the GPL-2.0-or-later license, which is OSI-approved or FSF-free, so you can use, copy and change it for free.
How do I install Ardour?
Download it from the repository or build it from source by following the README on GitHub.
Can Ardour replace GarageBand?
Ardour is commonly used as a free alternative to GarageBand, Ableton Live, FL Studio and Pro Tools. Features differ, so check that it opens the file formats and covers the workflows you rely on before switching.