External effects question

Is there any way to make use of external effects in arduor? we’re trying to record guitars clean but hear distortion when we record it.

There are multiple ways you could do that. You could run it through a plugin (LADSPA or otherwise) within ardour to add the distortion, or route it through jack to an external program which adds the effect.

@jimbobthefarmer: i presume that by external effects you mean external h/w effects? if so, then you need to right click in the same pre-and post fader areas used to add plugins, but instead add an “Insert”. You will be taken to a dialog where you can define the connections for the input(s) and output(s) of the insert. This will send audio off to its outputs (which could connect to a different channel of your audio interface that is connected to the external h/w FX unit. It will also read audio back from its inputs (which would presumably be connected to yet another different channel that is connected the outputs of the FX unit. Done. Same technique to route via external JACK applications, by the way. Then make sure that you have Options -> Monitoring -> Ardour does monitoring enabled, and also “Run Plugins while Recording” (which is slightly misnamed).