How to Install Ardour with Jack Audio on Linux Mint and Ubuntu

Installing Ardour, the Digital Audio Workstation, on Linux Mint or Ubuntu isn’t too difficult if you follow the steps shown in this video.

Before you start installing Ardour, you will need to download and install Jack Audio Server. Search for qJack or Jack on your software installer and install it. qJack is the frontend program that makes using and installing it very easy.

After that, configure it as it is shown at the website. You can edit the configuration files using a text editor like NANO from the command line or a graphical text editor. Please do apply them as you are told over here:

jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html

After that, take a look at this video:

youtu.be/fMz6fDGBnA4

It’s slightly outdated since they use an older version of Jack but you will find the settings in qJack when you go to Setup → Settings → Advanced.

There’s a good reason to follow these steps because it will help you to install and configure realtime audio (and you will need this!) in a correct manner. The Realtime Audio will even turn a system with an onboard sound card into a good mixing and editing machine. For recording, I use a dedicated machine with KXStudio/Ardour with a 4-channel USB interface (Behringer U-PHORIA UMC404HD). But you might even be able to use a standard soundcard for recording (I have not tested this!).

Now you can install Ardour. And that’s easy! Open your software installer, type in [ Ardour ] in the search field (no brackets) and install it!

In the video I will show the above mentioned steps.

(Audio recorded using Ardour 4.0, video recorded with “record my desktop” and video edited with kdenlive)