Hello Kontakt aPilger
Have you tried the LSP SEND and LSP RETURN plugins?
You can use ardour with pipewire-jack and then ardour can connect to applications that work with pipewire, but in some cases on some systems this does not work correctly.
For those cases there is a reasonably simple and elegant way to connect ardour with the “outside world”, that is, the sound of your pc in linux ubuntu.
Install the LSP plugins: Linux Studio Plugins Project, follow the instructions included in the readme to the letter.
Within the list of lsp plugins there are 3 plugins that interest us LSP SEND, LSP RETURN and some of the mixers offered by LSP.
These plugins in version 1.2.20. They offer the possibility of using the shared memory space of the system.
I use it in Ubuntustudio, currently in version 24.04lts.
When you have installed the lsp plugins you will have seen several folders, one of them is called jack, which is the standalone version that works in pipewire, that is the one we will choose and look for in our system menu (it will be there if you have installed it correctly) the LSP SEND.
Once opened, open QPWGRAPH: GitHub - rncbc/qpwgraph: qpwgraph - A PipeWire Graph Qt GUI Interface Or PATCHANCE: GitHub - Houston4444/Patchance: Jack Patchbay GUI , or COPPWR: GitHub - dimtpap/coppwr: Low level control GUI for the PipeWire multimedia server and inside you will see LSP waiting for you to connect it to something, you can open VLC or any other player, firefox, obs, etc and connect it to LSP SEND, you will probably have to lower the output volume of the plugin once you have verified that it is receiving a signal from vlc or the program you have used, as a sound source.
In the LSP SEND itself there is a space that says send, there you write a name for example vlc.
Then in Ardour create a track and insert the LSP RETURN plugin and in the space that says return you write the same name as in the send and in theory you should be able to listen in ardour what the send plugin sends, the only thing is that if you want to record what LSP return plays you will have to record it using another track connected to the LSP return track.
As I mentioned at the beginning, ardour works for me (linux) without much problem with the pw option, but I know that there are people for whom it does not work well or who do not want to make changes and modifications to the sound system, but do want to connect ardour with the rest of the sound on the PC.
Greetings