I adore Ardour. Looking forward to version 9!
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Ardour is the software, along with the browser, that I use the most on my computer.
I have been using ardour for 6-8 years and works perfectly stable for me.
I’ve had issues with crashes in the past due to overusing Yabridge plugins. I’ve reduced the number of Yabridge plugins to a minimum, and everything works perfectly.
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Ardour 8.12 crashes unacceptably often for me when editing.
So I downgraded to 8.11. yawn
Looking forward to 9.0
Good night.
What platform? Linux, Windows, Mac? Hardware?
Linux, Plasma (KDE) Wayland, NUC7i5. I suspect an X-Wayland problem, but haven’t had the time to solidify that into a bug report.
Here’s another post with crashes supposedly caused by X-Wayland
Ardour is THE open-source solution for professional audio-makers. I am a composer and teacher of electroacoustic music in two Music Universities in Germany, have been using Ardour for the last 14 years (almost every day!) and have created various works and performed in concerts using Ardour. I can express my experience this way: I will NEVER change to any other DAW for my work!
If Ardour is not working for you (and I hear this from many people on funny Operating Systems like Windows) the solution for you would be even more frustrating, since the problem is Windows, not Ardour! First move from Windows to GNU/Linux! 
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I can confirm that Ardour does not work reliably on Wayland (latest Fedora).
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To put it more specifically : X-Wayland in latest Fedora is somewhat buggy and crashes Ardour.
You should file a Fedora bug report.
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It has been unstable for me as well on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. I am using Xorg video. Plugins that previously worked now cause random crashes. I have also been using Pipewire / Jack. I am beginning to suspect Pipewire. When I used only ALSA on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ardour was very very stable with version 8.6.
Ardour never freeze to me… I’ve had the occasional crash due to bugs, but each version fixes them as development progresses.
But my side is running stable.
Wayland still sucks.
I’m having some crashes also with version 8.12, these did not happen with a previous version I used (was it 8.9 ?). I’m on Manjaro KDE which still uses Xorg and does not use pipewire I think. I only use ACE - plugins and Jack 1. I guess I must debug this someday. I’m also using nVidia proprietary driver. The crashes occur most likely when I’ve been recording and editing a long time ( 1 - 2 hours ). Luckily I’m saving my progress as snapshots regularly so no lost work here.
It’s been very stable for me since version 6, before that I would get the occasional crash. - but was that Ardour or was it my system at the time, we’ll never know but I’m guessing it wasn’t Ardour.
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My system is Windows and I would have no chance of using the FIREFACE UC USB unless I use an apple box which I don’t want. Digital audio is a new field for me that I’m learning. Ardour and Mixbus are supporting me with stability so that my learning curve is not flattened by crashes and other inadequacies. Many thanks to the developers for this.
I know I shouldn’t swear to it, but my system is stable.
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I use Ardour a lot (on Fedora with X11) and just accept the odd crash as a fact of life, it has always been like that but is such an incredibly useful DAW otherwise, that it wouldn’t stop me from using it (and crash recovery works very well).
And frankly, DAWs and audio stuff is so complex, most users rely on a bunch of third party plugins that are beyond the control of the DAW maintainers, it is a wonder any of this stuff works at all. It is not only Ardour, most DAWs I have used, have these issues.
The error I get is almost always the same: Gdk-ERROR. The program received an X-Window System Error. The error was BadWindow (invalid Window parameter).
It almost always happens when closing a plugin GUI window. Now, I don’t know if that’s an Ardour bug or these plugins have some kind of issue. But it happens with various plugins, some more than others.
I usually run Ardour with the --sync argument, which seems to reduce these crashes a lot.
To be fair : since you’ve changed both your OS and your audio system; how do you know that it’s actually Ardour that’s unstable?
Especially since it apparently are plugins, and not Ardour itself, that are crashing.
Ubuntu 24.04 seems to be using PipeWire 1.0.4, which is more than a year old.
If you can’t go back to using pure ALSA you should try to install the latest PW (1.4.2) and see if things are improving.
Ardour developer Paul Davis has said that he thinks PW 1.2 is the oldest version you should use, for it to be working somewhat optimally.
I have ubuntu mate with the mate desktop. And i almost always use Alsa. Sometimes i use pulseaudio. In my opinion is Alsa the most stable audio backend. I use linux native plugins and ardour runs very well and stable.
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Reaper and Bitwig are stable in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS . They have very few issues compared to Ardour. They can run for hours without issues. Ardour and Mixbus32C V10 crash about every hour, in some way shape or form especially during MIDI Editing and plugin editing. Sometimes strange audio glitches. Other problems are one offs and never reoccur in the same session at a later date. Similar problems occur in Win10 Version of Ardour and Mixbus. Cubase, Bitwig and Reaper will work for hours in Win10 without issue.
Yes, my Pipewire is showing version 1.0.5. Old.
Thank you for pointing that out. I don’t want to manually install PW > 1.2. I don’t want to break my system.
That’s a strong argument for running Reaper or Bitwig. They are both excellent DAWs.
Much more productive than complaining about Ardour.
BTW, I can cause issues in Reaper most of the times I use it within 5-10 mins. Bitwig seems better but my experience with it is limited.