Ardour WITHOUT Jack and simple config mods?

I am not a power musician/editor type. I just need to edit a podcast and work on my film soundtracks for my experimental short films. Isn’t there a way to ru Ardour without adding Jack into the mix? Other software does fine without Jack, namely Audacity. I just want to edit audio. I do no Midi, etc. I know this app is huge and way over the top for editing what I want to do but Audacity is first, ugly and second, it makes me throw my hands up in the air it’s so foreign compared to editing with my Windows apps I am forced to still use, like Vegas/Sound Forge, Adobe Soundbooth, etc.

Also, is there a way to configure the playback head to follow and park with a cursor click? That one is a real issue for me. I would love to make 2 changes to the system and that would be to have the cursor fix itself where I click and second, to be able to zoom the timeline centerd on the cursor position using the thumb wheel of the mouse. Are those configurations I can make some place. Love the “look” but not the feel - yet.

(Is there no search in these forums?)

S

In my opinion JACK is essential to any (pro)audio setup on linux, and kind of integral to using ardour. Once properly configured (which really doesn’t take that long to figure out) it shouldn’t really be all that ‘visible’ if you just want to do (simple) editing within ardour. In most cases you can just start ardour, ardour automatically starts JACK, the audio connections are automatically made to route audio from ardour to your sound card via JACK and the ALSA drivers. e.g.

Ardour->JACK->ALSA->speakers

And then if you find you need a more flexible audio routing system than you could ever hope to get on windows, you already have JACK there just waiting to do its stuff. Its really worth learning about JACK.

Isn't there a way to ru Ardour without adding Jack into the mix?

No.

Other software does fine without Jack, namely Audacity.

Other software has very different purposes.

I know this app is huge and way over the top for editing what I want to do but Audacity is first, ugly and second, it makes me throw my hands up in the air it's so foreign compared to editing with my Windows apps I am forced to still use, like Vegas/Sound Forge, Adobe Soundbooth, etc.

Honestly issue 1 is a non-issue. Issue 2 could be more of one, though I gotta be honest, I have taught people that have no clue about technology, music, or really anything computer related to use Audacity. It isn’t to hard to learn.

Also, is there a way to configure the playback head to follow and park with a cursor click? That one is a real issue for me. I would love to make 2 changes to the system and that would be to have the cursor fix itself where I click and second, to be able to zoom the timeline centerd on the cursor position using the thumb wheel of the mouse. Are those configurations I can make some place. Love the "look" but not the feel - yet.

For the first part, click in the timeline area, not on the regions which has a very different meaning. Or just use the keyboard shortcut of ‘P’ to move the playhead very quickly(This is almost exclusively what I do).

For the second issue at the bottom of the window next to the zoom buttons is a dropdown box where you can set the zoom point. A modifier key and scroll wheel (On Mac this is Apple+Wheel) will zoom in and out. Those options likely already fix your issues.

   Seablade

and now that jack won’t work on OSX EL Capitain?

@angelo.grieco

This thread is 6 years old now and very out of date. You can run Ardour without Jack just fine on OS X.

      Seablade