Tape mode

Tape Mode, or "Destructive" mode, allows an Ardour track to behave like an analog tape machine.  Any recording that happens on the track will destroy any underlying data, just like a piece of linear tape.

tape tracks are recognizable by the "tape" icon in the Record button.

Audio Tracks in "Tape mode" have only a single playlist, a single region (which spans the length of the session) and a single underlying audio file.

The region for a tape track starts at the Session Start time.  Changing the session start time before any audio has been recorded will cause the start time of the Tape Track to move to the new start time.  Once audio has been recorded into the track, it is impossible to change the start time of the tape track.

Tape Tracks are very useful in certain situations.  Use cases include:

• Live recording. In this case you can stop the transport for a break, then restart the transport later, without creating separate files.  At the end of the day, you have one file per track.
• Traditional "tape style" recording.  Some recording situations lend themselves to a workflow that doesn't need previous takes.  Capturing the last "keeper" is all that is required.  This can dramatically reduce the disk storage and file management for a project, and therefore make it go much faster.
• Recording the returns from reverbs and other external gear.  Because these sounds are completely dependent on other parts of the session, it is not important to keep up with previous takes.  Only the final take is important.
• Recording the final mix output of Ardour.  Using a destructive tape track to record the master outputs provides a continually-updated mixdown of the overall session.  this can often save the time of a "render" if someone wants to take an interim mix with them to review.  In very long projects (such as a film soundtrack) this can be extremely useful.  By "punching in" to the final render, the mix engineer can fix a few moments in the middle of the project mixdown without having to re-render the entire session.

Tape-style recording requires a unix-like filesystem, such as those used on Linux and Mac OSX.  Tape mode will not work correctly on FAT32 file systems.  You have been warned.