ARDOUR File

What are ARDOUR files and how to open them

Are you having problems opening an ARDOUR file or are you simply curious about its contents? We're here to explain the properties of these files and provide you with software that can open or handle your ARDOUR files.

What is an ARDOUR file?

An .ARDOUR file is an Ardour Session file.

Ardour Session files record the full setup, layout, and editing state of a digital audio project created with the Ardour digital audio workstation. These files store everything needed to restore the project's structure including tracks, buses, timelines, plugins, regions, automation, mixer settings, routing, tempo, meter, and metadata. They do not themselves contain the actual audio or MIDI data, only references to those files.

The primary Ardour application writes these session files. When a new project (or "session") is created or saved, Ardour generates a session directory on disk which contains one main state file and possibly additional snapshot or backup state files. Within this directory live subfolders that hold the audio files, MIDI files, waveform peaks, plugin data, analysis data, and other supporting content. When the session file is opened later, Ardour reads this state to rebuild the project environment, locate media files, recall automation and mixer settings, and resume editing or mixing.

The state files are formatted as human-readable XML. Fields within the XML describe session-wide settings such as sample rate, tempo and meter, and objects such as tracks, playlists, regions, fades, routing, automation, mute/solo status, plugin chains, and control IDs. The structure allows Ardour to support versioned snapshots of session state when required.

Ardour Session files begin with an XML declaration indicating version 1.0 and UTF-8 encoding. Internal identifiers and field names that frequently occur include SESSION VERSION, SAMPLE-RATE, BEATS-PER-MINUTE, AUTOMATION, ROUTES, METERPOSTFADER, GAINCONTROL, MAIN-OUTS among others. These keywords help applications recognize and parse these session files. The root node and XML tags conform to Ardour's own internal schema (though publicly no official schema or DTD is published).

How to open ARDOUR files

Important: Different programs may use files with the ARDOUR file extension for different purposes, so unless you are sure which format your ARDOUR file is, you may need to try a few different programs.

While we have not verified the app ourselves yet, our users have suggested a single ARDOUR opener which you will find listed below.

Last updated: August 20, 2026

Various apps that use files with this extension

These apps are known to open certain types of ARDOUR files. Remember, different programs may use ARDOUR files for different purposes, so you may need to try out a few of them to be able to open your specific file.

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