LinuxMusicians

I'm just starting out and I don't know anything about the plug ins for Ardour, what is there out there, what kind of things can I do with it. I play guitar and would even like to use keys and voice and effects. I'm not in a rush because I have a handful just learning Ardour right now. I don't even know how addons are added to it.

arpegadream wrote:I'm not in a rush

Then spend some time reading this exact subforum. Here's a lot of discussion regarding plugins and virtual instruments for Linux, hence the name.

The easiest way is to add the kxstudio repos - https://kx.studio/Repositories

arpegadream wrote:I don't even know how addons are added to it.

Download LV2 and/or VST plugins. Make two hidden folders under your home folder called ".vst" and ".lv2" (if you're new to Linux file conventions, you need to know that the dot prefix indicates a hidden folder). Put your plugins in their respective folders. They need to be Linux-native plugins, unless you want to jump through some additional hoops to get Windows-native plugins working.

Shameless cross-post, get some sweet sweet reverb plugins here: https://github.com/michaelwillis/dragon ... 2.9.0-beta

Try first to install available plugin packages from your own distribution or from kxstudio repos. At least relevant packages to look at are:
calf-plugins
lsp-plugins
tal-plugins
zam-plugins

From there you will get enough implementations of basic plugins, like reverb, delay, chorus, etc.

And for guitar, in case you have electric guitar, and are recording it directly from guitar, you most likely want to have guitarix. Normally guitarix is separate program, and you can route signal at recording time thru guitarix, or route from ardour to guitarix and then back to ardour for recording processed audio. Guitarix can be used as plugin also, but that is much more tricky.

And for synths, there is plenty of options. See viewtopic.php?f=48&t=18874

And for plugins in general, see also viewtopic.php?p=94172#p94172