Grid

Ardour's editor utilizes a grid to assist in the placement of regions on the timeline, or with editing functions that need to happen on a specific time.  With these buttons you can choose if you want the cursor and various objects to snap to this grid, and how you want the snapping to act.  You can also modify what units the grid measures as well to fit your needs.

With grid mode set to "No Grid", all kind of objects can be moved freely along the timeline. "Grid" will restrict the positions to certain grid units (i.e. beats), "Magnetic" will snap to grid units, but it is still possible to move objects to other places.

Syncing regions to the grid

By default a region's beginning will snap to points along the timeline, but you can change this behaviour by setting a sync point in the region. Select the region(s) and press v . This will set the sync point to your edit point.

The sync point is marked by a thin vertical line at the desired position.

Before setting sync points, set the snap mode to "No Grid", otherwise the position of the sync point will also snap to grid units.