Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by stefanos82 | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

stefanos82·

What is the original story behind Ardour's creation?

What motivated you writing such complicated application?

P.S.: I have the GUI layout and I don't care what people say about GTK!

View on HN

I wanted a DAW to record my own fledging attempts at electronic music. I took a vow in the 80s to never use Windows, Apple systems seemed overpriced, and I had years of *nix experience, including a bit of Linux. In the late 90s there was a Linux app called "Multitrack" which seemed capable on the surface, but it turned out not to be. I called Digidesign to ask them if I could port ProTools to Linux for them (for free), and they laughed. So I thought "how hard could it be to just write my own?" ... 22+ years later, here I am.

A longer version is here: https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333

That's a cool story.

Ardour is awesome and shows that specialized niche software can compete or even out-compete commercial proprietary software (like QGIS in the GIS space).

I hope it will be around for a long time and it's a nice piece of software, thx Paul.

> my own fledging attempts at electronic music.

i'd like to hear more about that.

you might find this interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndTAbjPqm0 - I think Paul talks a bit about the background of Ardour and it's history

Thank you for your reply, that's quite an interesting story!

Don't ask me why my fingers typed "have" instead of "love" lol, I have no idea! O.o

Reply on news.ycombinator.com