Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

MusicBee VS Ardour

Compare MusicBee VS Ardour and see what are their differences

MusicBee logo MusicBee

While iTunes might be the benchmark music organizer and player app, MusicBee is a strong alternative that many prefer.

Ardour logo Ardour

Record, edit, and mix on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
  • MusicBee Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-13
  • Ardour Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-13

MusicBee videos

The Absolute Best Music App for Windows 10 - MusicBee.

More videos:

  • Review - TOP BEST MUSIC PLAYER APPLICATION FOR PC | MusicBee | APP REVIEW

Ardour videos

What is Ardour?

More videos:

  • Review - Ardour Review ENDED
  • Tutorial - Ardour Tutorial - Digital Audio Workstation for Linux

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MusicBee and Ardour)
Audio Player
100 100%
0% 0
Audio & Music
0 0%
100% 100
Media Player
100 100%
0% 0
Audio
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using MusicBee and Ardour. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare MusicBee and Ardour

MusicBee Reviews

The best free music players 2021: organize, tag and enjoy your music collection
MediaMonkey plays and organizes both music and video, and unlike some dual-purpose media players, it does an excellent job of both. It identifies tracks with missing metadata and searches for the information online, and like MusicBee, its superb tagging tool lets you tag files using industry-standard formats.
10 Best Winamp Alternatives for Windows 10
Well, MusicBee is a full-fledged music player app that offers lots of advanced features. The music player is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows XP operating systems. If we talk about the features, MusicBee allows you to edit or add ID3 tag information of music. Another best feature of MusicBee is that Auto DJ mode lets you automate music playback....
Source: techviral.net
Best Windows 10 Music Player Apps for PCs in 2019
Toss in gapless playback, some pretty robust equalizer controls and a host of customizations, and MusicBee very easily becomes your music player. You can even pump the sound out of your PC in 5.1 if you have the speakers for it!
The best free music players for Windows PCs
MusicBee is our top choice and an excellent pick for those who have huge collections of tunes that need to be organized. It can import your existing iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and lets you tag each file as you see fit. The program’s Auto DJ feature lets you sync with Last.fm and will play similar artists or genres based on what you play. You can also set up...
The best free music player 2019
MediaMonkey plays and organizes both music and video, and unlike some dual-purpose media players, it does an excellent job of both. It identifies tracks with missing metadata and searches for the information online, and like MusicBee, its superb tagging tool lets you tag files using industry-standard formats.

Ardour Reviews

  1. Great for the poor man. Still needs A LOT of improvements, specially on midi editing.

    Copy Yes, you can start a project from scratch and end up with a great sounding track using Ardour. Specially if you use mostly audio. For those like me who use both audio and midi editing, it may easily drive you to a real nightmare. The DAW doesn't behave as you would expect. The "share regions" will get you good as you edit one region and it "magically" ruins the original one. Oh, just use copy instead of share, like they say right? Nope. It still bugs you to the bone. So you have to go manually "unlinking" every single region. Some regions may be a single note, for example, and you can miss that. Oh, so I will consolidate all regions before unlinking! Nope, there is not such thing here. Another example: You want to keep only a certain midi note on your midi track, the C3 that is you Drum Kick. You cannot do it, unless if you go deleting every single other note, one by one! Terrible isn't it? No, you cannot copy a single note through the entire track. Sometimes I managed to select a note through the track and delete it. So I took note how I did it and... Next time it's a negative! With so many different selections of tools, smart, playhead, etc, it appears the DAW confuses itself and do not respond appropriately. So... my advice to you is not to fall for what I did, which is believing Ardour can do everything it says it does, cause it doesn't. Keep simple with audio recording and editing. Do your midi stuff elsewhere and run from the nightmare I got myself into. Nevertheless, it is great cost/benefit DAW. Worthy a try. Yes, you can start a project from scratch and end up with a great sounding track using Ardour. Specially if you use mostly audio. For those like me who use both audio and MIDI editing, it may easily drive you into a real nightmare. The DAW doesn't behave as you would expect. The "share regions" will get you good as you edit one region and it "magically" ruins the original one. Oh, just use copy instead of share, like they say right? Nope. It still bugs you to the bone. So you have to go manually "unlinking" every single region. Some regions may be a single note, for example, and you can miss that. Oh, so I will consolidate all regions before unlinking! Nope, there is not such thing here. Another example: You want to keep only a certain midi note on your midi track, the C3 that is you Drum Kick. You cannot do it, unless if you go deleting every single other note, one by one! Terrible isn't it? No, you cannot copy a single note through the entire track. Sometimes I managed to select a note through the track and delete it. So I took note how I did it and... Next time it's a negative! With so many different selections of tools, smart, playhead, etc, it appears the DAW confuses itself and do not respond appropriately. So... my advice to you is not to fall for what I did, which is believing Ardour can do everything it says it does, cause it doesn't. Keep simple with audio recording and editing. Do your midi stuff elsewhere and run from the nightmare I got myself into. Nevertheless, it is great cost/benefit DAW. Worthy a try.


Top 18 Free Music Making Software for Beginners [2023]
Ardour is an open-source DAW designed to help music-makers make pro-level music by offering robust tools for recording, editing, and mixing songs on Windows, macOS, or Linux PCs.
5 PRO TOOLS ALTERNATIVES FOR RECORDING AND MIXING AUDIO
Ardour is a free and open-source DAW with capabilities similar to Pro Tools. It was designed for audio professionals, but it can be used by any musician or producer who wants to create professional-quality recordings. Ardour has a traditional track recorder layout with timecode and multi-track editing. It also includes a powerful mixer, effects processors, and recording tools.
10 Best Audacity Alternatives for Audio Recording and Editing
It offers a feature to see your recording wave while letting you adjust and monitor the input gains for clear and clean recordings. Ardour presents a huge editing platform with editing tools like trim, cut, swing and transpose, etc. so that you can easily mix your tracks with the tools like a fader, mute and automate, etc.
Top 10 LMMS Alternatives and Similar Software
Ardour is a very capable alternative for LMMS. Ardour is a bit complicated to use. That’s why it’s recommended only for those who have prior professional experience of editing and mixing music. If you’re an audio engineer, you’ll love Ardour for recording a piece of music and then editing and mixing it. It comes with some recently added features-
Best LMMS Alternatives 2017
This LMMS alternative is a hard disk recorder as well as digital audio workplace application. It turns on GNU/Linux and Mac OS X. Ardour’s purpose is to provide digital audio workplace software suitable for proficient use. Ardour source code is freely accessible but pre-built binaries are profitable free-libre software.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ardour should be more popular than MusicBee. It has been mentiond 110 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

MusicBee mentions (44)

  • Winamp has announced that it is "opening up" its source code
    Not lightweight, but I've fallen in love with MusicBee (https://getmusicbee.com/) and it's been my only music player for at least the last 10 years. Love everything about it. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • shall i keep using my windows media player PC (windows)
    My personal preference is Musicbee, a very elegant and flexible media player. Source: about 1 year ago
  • A more flexible media player?
    MusicBee. Granular customizations galore. Free. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Portable Player With Easy To Use PC Software For Syncing & Playlists?
    I use the Musicolet software on the player itself (it's in the Google Play store, and there are APKs available on APKPure), and on the PC, I use the MusicBee software to organize music and create/edit playlists. Source: about 1 year ago
  • What would be the best lossless codec for long term storage/archival of CD rips?
    Seriously though, it's time to explore! Foobar2000 and MusicBee are both freeware alternatives to WMP that are well-known in the audiophile community. Source: over 1 year ago
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Ardour mentions (110)

  • Ask HN: Is There a Blender for Music?
    Effects you can hear. [0] https://ardour.org/ [1[ https://cybershow.uk/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • What Is the Future of the DAW?
    I'm the lead author of Ardour [0], and I'd very much like to hear more about your frustrations, since over the next 1-2 years, paying attention to non-European musical culture is one of the things I hope to focus on during development. You can reach me via the email address in my profile, or maybe use our forums at discourse.ardour.org. Thanks. [0] https://ardour.org/ <= a cross-platform open source DAW that has... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Red Blob Games: Interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms
    One extra detail, something I've learned from 20 years of working on dragging all kinds of objects around the GUI of Ardour [0]: handle ALL button press and release events as drag events where there is no movement. [0] https://ardour.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Absolute beginner seeking advice
    I am aware of the 'Real Tone Cable' however I am curious if this is what I should be buying if I also intend on recording my playing in a software such as 'Ardour'. Source: 12 months ago
  • How to map multiple samples with linux-sampler?
    I just loaded an instance of samplv https://samplv1.sourceforge.io/ into the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), Ardour https://ardour.org/ . Source: about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing MusicBee and Ardour, you can also consider the following products

foobar2000 - An advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform.

Audacity - Audacity is a free and open-source audio production software suite that includes a surprising array of editing tools and recording systems.

VLC Media Player - VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework.

LMMS - Make music with a free, cross-platform tool

AIMP - AIMP : Free Audio Player : Официальный сайт программы

Reaper - Reaper is a focused digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Cockos. In the creation of the software, the digital audio technology company intended to make audio editing accessible to the masses.