Using WAV samples in ARDOUR
It took me ages to figure this out, so here’s a quick note.
There are lots of free instrument samples on the web (and commercial ones you can purchase). To use these in a recording you need a sample synthesizer or engine that can play them.
There are several file types that are used, but the most common are “SoundFonts,” WAV, and AIG.
For sound fonts, a good ARDOUR plugin is the CALF Monosynth; for WAV files (and lots of other formats), the samplv1 looks like it works really well.