I do a lot of work with midi files, and currently I’m not too happy with how MIDIs are treated in Ardour. Normally with midis you want to be able to change the instrument and set it to soundfonts you specify. Right now, I can’t see any way to do that. When you import a midi, it sets it to generic/MIDI and the only options are different pianos and piano synths. Also, midis only import with a single track per file instead of splitting up the file by its individual tracks, which makes it a lot harder to edit preexisting midis. Thanks!
I think you’ll be better served with a different tool. I’d look at rosegarden, maybe muse2, though I don’t do this sort of workflow so IDK. Perhaps ardour will add some features like this, but as of right now I wouldn’t describe ardour as a midi editor, at all. It just wasn’t made with this in mind. Ardour just uses midi as an additional way to capture performances. Its not really a midi player per se either. Instead it expects the composer/musician/producer to select a midi instrument to playback through, typically a synth or sampler rather than through some generic soundfont. For me and my work if ardour only used a GM soundfont midi would be useless!
I’d like to see everyone love ardour as much as me though, so if you think ardour could use these features, log into the bug tracker and file feature requests. Nothing happens from forum posts except more forum posts. Once its in the tracker the devs will look at it eventually.