I started using Ardour a year or 2 back, but found I was spending nearly all of my time fighting with the software and like yourself, struggled to find ready answers on the net. The forum was full of helpful folk, but I would have to stop my project, post a problem and then wait for an answer. After a few months, I had not completed a single project as I always hit a problem I could not solve, despite watching many hours of tutorials on youtube in the hope of seeing an answer to my current issue..
Finally I gave up.. I looked around and tried a couple of DAWs but it was Qtractor that finally got me going. Learning curve was not to steep, everything just seemed to work and using Ubuntu Studio along with the kxstudio repos, I had a huge number of toys to play with. Cant recommend Qtractor enough, truly wonderful piece of software..
As for Ardour, well I do very occasionally dip my toe back into the Ardour waters but I end up in the same place every time, with a problem I cant figure out myself with either the net, the manual or the youtube tutorials. Always go straight back to Qtractor and it is always effortless to make music again.
Not an expert at any of this stuff, am a guitar player that likes to make music to play along with, but my answer to your question is that you might find Ardour can do one or two things that Qtractor cant, but I have never been able to progress far enough into Ardour to find out what they are. Am just messing around with using LMMS bolted onto Qtractor and honestly, there is huge amount there to play with and keep me busy for a long time. Along with the steady and regular updates that you get with Qtractor (am a big fan of small and steady tweaks rather than big jolting jumps), I cannot fault Qtractor and it gets my vote every time..
I started using Ardour a year or 2 back, but found I was spending nearly all of my time fighting with the software and like yourself, struggled to find ready answers on the net. The forum was full of helpful folk, but I would have to stop my project, post a problem and then wait for an answer. After a few months, I had not completed a single project as I always hit a problem I could not solve, despite watching many hours of tutorials on youtube in the hope of seeing an answer to my current issue..
Finally I gave up.. I looked around and tried a couple of DAWs but it was Qtractor that finally got me going. Learning curve was not to steep, everything just seemed to work and using Ubuntu Studio along with the kxstudio repos, I had a huge number of toys to play with. Cant recommend Qtractor enough, truly wonderful piece of software..
As for Ardour, well I do very occasionally dip my toe back into the Ardour waters but I end up in the same place every time, with a problem I cant figure out myself with either the net, the manual or the youtube tutorials. Always go straight back to Qtractor and it is always effortless to make music again.
Not an expert at any of this stuff, am a guitar player that likes to make music to play along with, but my answer to your question is that you might find Ardour can do one or two things that Qtractor cant, but I have never been able to progress far enough into Ardour to find out what they are. Am just messing around with using LMMS bolted onto Qtractor and honestly, there is huge amount there to play with and keep me busy for a long time. Along with the steady and regular updates that you get with Qtractor (am a big fan of small and steady tweaks rather than big jolting jumps), I cannot fault Qtractor and it gets my vote every time..
Good luck with it..!