ive asked claude to take the code from the already built in fluid synth, and create a sampler out of it. tbh im not sure why ardour doesnt already have a built in sampler, considering a sampler is a staple tool in just about any other daw. anyways, in my personal build i now have one, and have made a pull request for it, just so the ardour devs can take a look and perhaps use the code to add a sampler to ardour.
does any one else think ardour should have a sampler? i always use one when making music. and linux doesnt have a decent sampler with the features i want, thats in my repos. so, this would be really cool i think for many others. btw, this has drag and drop, and buttons to quickly change the campels from other samples in the same folder. and also, some cool sound editing controls as well. btw its polyphonic with the ability to pitch a sample up and down.
The Ardour philosphy is that the DAW should have minimal functionality built in, and that specific features should be provided by plugins.
At the risk of being overly pedantic, fluid synth is not âbuilt in,â it ships as a plugin with the install package from ardour.org. If you get ardour from a linux distribution repository it typically installs independently of any plugins and you have to install plugins separately. Same if you build yourself from source, the build process only generates the ardour binary, you would have to get the plugins elsewhere.
The fact that Ardour bundle from ardour.org installs some plugins along with Ardour is purely a convenience, not intrinsic.
Which ones have you tried? LSP (Linux Studio Plugins) has a couple different sampler variants, the guy who makes the QTractor sequencer/DAW (rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela) makes samplv1 as well as drumkv1.
Those are probably the most widely known available for linux, lsp, samplv1, and drumkv1.
Depending on what you are trying to do the Ardour cue page could be considered a type of sampler.
i think the whole âminimal functionalityâ philosophy in this case doesnt make any sense. one could argue that point for any feature already in ardour. âwhy have a mixer?â, âlets use pulse audio as an effects chainâ, no need for audio editing tools when you have audacity!. lmao. yeah, a sampler imho is pretty much expected from me from any daw in 2026. your second point is correct. but i dont care if its ships with ardour as a plug-in or whatever. im currently building it from source, so thats all that matters to me. and yes ive tried the other samplers. i dont think theyre very good for my workflow. in my case, i want to be able to drag and drop samples from ardours clip launcher into the sampler ( which this can do ) and be able to change samples quickly. i also wanted to be able to play them like an instrument ( which this can do ) and be lightweight. another issue that ive brought up, is that, when it comes to linux, any thing that can be shipped with in the box, is a big deal to me. it means less work tracking other software down, and it also means i donât have to worry if a certain plug is available in my repos. thats kind of a big deal to me. not every liinux distro has all these plugs in their repos you know.
Actually the philosophy that is relevant here is to include not to pretend that a given plugin that we provide is likely to be someoneâs choice. There are several good basic sampler plugins available, and we donât think it is appropriate for us to âblessâ one of them. That isnât meant to be an argument against writing a new one; it is an argument related to whether any particular sampler should be distributed as a part of Ardour.
having a decent stock sampler isnt âblessingâ a sampler for people. its giving artist some default usable tool, that if they wish, they can use something else. however, i donât think it makes much sense to not have at least some form of a basic sampler. none of the other samplers i have tried on linux (If i can even install them on whatever distro i happen to be using ) , besides maybe LSP, but even their stuff is odd and a bit over engineered for my taste, comes close to the easy and simplicity of a sampler like this. or something like what fl studio has, or ableton, or bitwig. basically every over daw ive used recently. you can find many articles and people talking in forums about ardour from many years back talking about how ardour doesnât have a built in sampler. also, agian, this idea of blessing something is odd. there are tools in ardour like compressors and limiters that are shipped with in the same fashion, and i dont think anyone would consider you âblessingâ them over anything else they might have. all i can say, is that its nice to have default tools, and a sampler is something i would have thought would come with ardour version 1 imho. im so sick of looking for linux samplers online just to find it annoying to even install them. keep them up to date. check if its in my repo, ect. cant you see why having some kind of sampler shipped with ardour would be a benefit?
Isnât Ardour itself a sampler of sorts? If one could assign a midi note(s) to play region(s), we would almost have it. lol That might be cool anyway. 
âŚto you.
FIFY
Cheers,
Keith
It is Beta software, and may or may not have some of the features youâre looking for. Definitely worth a try.
Oh brother please. Lets not pretend like i didnt give a few reasons, so let me fix it for you. This so called minimalist design philosophy is obviously used to shut down any attempt at improving ardours experience when it not afeature the devs want to work on. Not only that, this so called philosophy isnt even consistent. Like i mentioned before, there are other plug-ins like limiters and compressors that im thankful are there, if they had actually been consistent with this so called philosophy, they shouldnât be. This so called philosophy can also be used to argue against features that Ardour already has, to the point even you would probably find ridiculously silly. Imagine if it was used to argue against adding the cue window, we dont need an ableton style clip launcher. Imagine if it was used to argue against having a midi editor, i mean just use lmms or something else, hey, why does ardour even let your edit audio, just use audacity! Im glad we have all these extra features , personally. Doesnt sound like ardour is prone to being minimalistat all imho.
No fixing required. Itâs generally automatically implied that when someone types something on a forum that itâs their opinion.
The arguments for it though are that it has been specifically written to be part of ardour rather than being a third party sampler that has been asked for inclusion. That and you donât need to do it yourself and you also wonât have to spend time answering any further âthere should be a sampler in ardourâ threads 
Installing plugins is no more complicated than moving/copying a plugin folder at worst though. That said, bare basic FOSS sample players are oddly not plentiful. I can only think of DROPS, and Justasampler off the top of my head. Others like LSP, samplv1 and shortcircuit are getting more complex.
The problem with bundling plugins is that this will tie release cycles of those plugins with Ardour.
For that reason Ardour only ships a basic bread&butter set of plugins that are stable, feature complete, and work with generic UI.
The main benefit of plugins is that they can be developed and maintained by a 3rd party. If that wasnât the case no free/libre software project would need to support plugins in the first place.
I actually agree with most of what you say here, but not all distros like nixos make it wasy to install plug-ins nor doea every distro have plug ins in their repos. This is why having tools in the box is a big deal for me. It also means that where ever i go, all i need is one tool to be available in the repos for me to get work done (the daw ). Not to mention more tools in the box makes collaboration so much easier when working with projects with other people. Not having to sync each others plug in libraries is so nice.
Dont you think a sampler is a bread and butter plug in?
Could a reasonable compromise be to have a separate, optional âadditionalâ pack which contained a bunch of plugins, scripts and, potentially, other content (maybe even themes).
This could be distributed on ardour.org, but separately developed and maintained and could even have a different set of maintainers (goodness knows you guys are busy enough with core Ardour).
it wouldnât necessarily even need to be updated at the same time as Ardour, unless there are breaking changes.
Cheers,
Keith
definitely not.
A sampler is a complex bit of software, that needs to be able to record, play, load and save samples ⌠transpose, allow polyphony, and usually filter, apply FX and envelope.
itâs a whole dairy industry, with bakery
I disagree. I think a sampler is a core tool for most electronic producers. That aside, good news! I got a sampler working for you guys! With envelopes, playback, and even some basic filters and it transposes to the incoming midi. All you gotta do is look at it and use it. lmao if a sampler isnt a bread and butter tool, then we must be living on mars. I suspect if you check out the pull request, most, if not all of the hard work is done. I dont know how much easier i can make it for you guys.not to mention, if ardour did have a basic sampler like this, i suspect it would quickly become a staple in most songs made with ardour. Esp EDM. no doubt. I would argue that 99% of songs made in fl studio or ableton are using their biult in sampler. Ive never came across an fl producer or ableton producer that didnt use the biult in sampler. The reason? Samplers are the most bread and butter tool in edm there is. I think i see the problem though. Im looking at this from a producers perspective and youâre looking at it from a dev perspective. Thats fair and all but imho its important to think about your users and our perspective. Even if a tool is complex under the hood, it still is a bread and butter tool to us. Fordging a hammer might be difficult, but for carpenters, a hammer is a bread and butter tool. Compilers are complex, but are a bread and butter tool for programmers. I mean i could go on and on.
Agian, just to be clear, bread and butter doesnât mean its easy to make. It means its a staple tool in someones toolbelt. It means its an essential tool to get work done. This is an odd argument imho. The complexity of it doesnt stop it from being bread and butter.
Ah! So thatâs why itâs so cold here and the air is so thin. Some of us up here really donât know what a âsamplerâ actually is or does ⌠perhaps that little green man who walked by a few moments ago can explain it to me âŚ
Sorry, I should have been more specific. I did not mean easy to make, but easy to learn and use; and I have not even touched on taste (UI layout, designâŚ).
Besides, a vast majority of Ardour users will have no use for a sampler, and think itâs just shovelware. The same for many other plugin that we could bundle. So we try to really only a ship a very minimal set: EQ, Compressor/Expander, Delay, Reverb and something so that users can hear MIDI. - We intentionally do not ship a Limiter or some coloring plugins which are to taste.
One can trigger samples in Ardour already, or duplicate region as needed on the timeline.
If a bundled sampler is important for you, then maybe Ardour isnât the right DAW for you?! You may even prefer Bitwigâs polyphonic automation in that caseâŚ