Ardour For Absolute Idiots

Ardour is supposed to be the end-all of Linux audio applications; the closest you can come to simulating a standalone digital mutitrack recorder/mixer system. Well, that's exactly what I'm looking for!

Let me tell you what, though, for the Linux beginner, such as I, getting Ardour lit up is a challenge. I don't have it working yet, and so I bring to you this log, in which I want to document what it took to get here.

First off, I have installed what I would call the "Planet CCRMA" package; their recommended setup, Fedora Core 1 with a customized low-latency kernel.

I've installed JACK, at least I'm pretty sure I have. I've got a wad of other stuff installed, too. I think I understand how to get JACK started.

Back to Ardour. I have it installed, fire it up, and hit the red "Record" button. Nothing happens. Nothing. I have audio coming through my sound card, cuz I have the line input hooked up to a CD, and the line out to a speaker. I hear music. Sound is flowing through the soundcard. Just not into Ardour. Argh.

I'm feeling pretty helpless, so I take a look at the Ardour documentatin PDF. The fine makers of Ardour want to charge for the documentation, and I'd gladly pay, if it actually showed a beginner how to use Ardour! To my frustration, the docs start out with "Plug in a microphone, record something, and we'll get started." Well, if I could get Ardour to do even that much, I would be a very happy guy. I've done plenty of recording in Audacity, so I'm not totally green at this; but I've never dealt with JACK, LADSPA, or all that other stuff. I'm pretty new to all this.

So for those of you Ardour pros out there, here is a screenshot of what I have in Ardour. All the other screenshots I see on the web show the Mixer panel having stuff to mix. I got nuthin'. I don't see where the items get added into the mixer, etc.

So what do I do folks? And yes, I did read the manual!

Below is a screenshot of what I see when I fire up Ardour, and pop open the Mixer panel. Folks, can somebody tell me what to do next? I'm not seeing anything obvious.