Open Source DAW – PodcastingTricks.com
Posted by podcastingtricks on August 1, 2006
If you’re into open source products, you probably think I am going to talk about Audacity. But you’re wrong. Instead, I am going to point you to a much more robust, (and harder to learn) piece of software called Ardour.
Ardour is a digital audio workstation (DAW). Podcasters can use it to record, edit and mix the audio for their podcasts. While products like Audacity allow for quick and easy sound recording, DAWs like Ardour are more about crafting and refining sound. This product would be more comparable to ProTools or DigitalPerformer.
There is one big difference between Ardour and other high-end DAWs…it’s free. The makers do accept donations but they’re not required.
Ardour doesn’t run on Windows but it does run on Macs or Linux. It supports VST plug-in architecture. It has one big advantage over some commercial DAWs in that it doesn’t interact with any particular hardware. If you want to run ProTools, you have to use Digidesign audio interfaces.
Since this is an open source tool, and free of charge, it’s not quite as robust as some of the pro-line DAWs. It’s not a sound file editor, a MIDI sequencer or a loop-based music system. But if you want to record, edit and mix audio for your podcast and you want something that does that fast and free, Ardour may be the DAW for you.
