What's new in Ardour 6.9.0
Aug 16, 2021
- Plugin Manager:
- Find it under the Window top-level menu
- The Plugin Manager provides a complete list of plugins that were found on your system, and data about each plugin's scan results.
- New standalone scanner applications for VST and AU plugins will scan your whole plugin collection without danger of crashing Ardour.
- The new scanner dialog allows you to skip individual plugins without canceling the whole scan process. Or set the scanner to auto-timeout while you take a break, and come back later to re-scan those individual plugins that wanted some user input.
- Sort and filter your plugins by name, brand, tags, or format.
- Tell Ardour to Ignore troublesome plugins so we won't try to load them at all.
- Ardour loads AU, VST2, VST3, and LV2 format plugins. Choose the format that works best for each plugin, and hide the ones you don't use (but might be used in some existing sessions).
- Improvements:
- Playlist Management Substantial changes to playlist management include:
- Global playlist actions like "New Playlist for rec-armed tracks" allow you to record a new take on all tracks that are record-armed, whether they are in a Group or not. You'll find these actions in the Track menu.
- "Copy Playlist for All Tracks" will store the timeline state of your arrangement, edits and automation. You can later switch between them while leaving your static mixer and plugin settings intact.
- Select a track and click "?" keyboard shortcut to open the Playlist Selector dialog. Click any playlist to listen to the alternative takes of that track, OR...
- ...change the scope to "ALL Tracks" and you can switch all tracks that have a matching playlist to your selection: if you recorded a take of the drums and bass together, you can switch the drum and bass playlists together even if they aren't in a Group.
- Create the perfect vocal or guitar comp: Create a new empty playlist and call it 'comp'. Then use the selector to switch between different takes and move the best take to your comp playlist. You can even have more than one comp playlist to compare with each other. And like the other playlist functions, you can edit multitracks with ease: by group, rec-armed, or ALL tracks.
- You can watch a video about these features in Mixbus (the behavior is identical there to Ardour).
- New GUI control allows blocking MIDI patch changes during session loading.
- Preference items to enable/disable VST2 and/or VST3 support.
- Add explicit actions for changing between stacked and overlaid region views, making this bindable (to a computer keyboard or MIDI).
- LV2 plugins: add support for plugins with multiple Atom ports (e.g. Sfizz, the SFZ player)
- Slip-contents editing now more easily accessible using Ctrl-Shift-drag (Cmd-Shift-drag on macOS) anywhere in a region. It is no longer necessary to place the mouse cursor near the edges of the region.
- Fix drawing the red recording rectangle to honor latency compensation (region no longer visibly jump at rec-stop).
- Varispeed Changes:
- The GUI for the "shuttle control" has been modified to present a simpler, easier to understand interface.
- Click on the "VS" button to enable/disable varispeed as well adjusting the varispeed settings. .
- The VS button will blink when varispeed is enabled.
- Varispeed settings are persistent, so you can revert to regular playback, then later re-enable varispeed to get back.
- Bug Fixes:
- Splash screen management has been changed. On Linux, this may conflict with your window manager's behavior - if so, go to Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Quirks and try the "Show/Hide" setting.
- Support for a Wine/windows build to run Windows VST plugins "natively" on Linux has been removed. ardour.org has never distributed these builds. There are plugin wrappers/bridges such as Yabridge that do a better job of making this possible.
- Muted MIDI regions are now actually muted.
- MIDI capture duration is correctly computed when loop recording.
- MIDI capture alignment is now correctly implemented.
- Loop recording working again after an unnoticed breakage.
- Various fixes for recently added region markers during editing.
- The "Escape" key now behaves identically while in internal editing modes as when in other mouse modes.
- Prevent accidental addition of multiple markers at the same position.
- In the Recorder tab, do not show input meters for control-only ports Faderport, Mackie, etc.
- During a slip-contents drag, regions are now transparent so that you can align transients.
- Fix Apple Coreaudio Source (used for MP3 import on macOS) -- was broken since 6.0
- Control Surfaces:
- US2400: Fix direction of pan knob LEDs.
- Mackie Control
- Change combined meter to use a peak meter with falloff.
- Reset surfaces once connected.
- Correctly handle the Monitor section being removed.
- Update the meters even when the transport is stopped.
- Move meter deflection calc to a function.
- Improved support for iCON QCon Pro X.
- When reconnecting ports, don't give up on first failure.
- Don't call port write directly since it bypasses active chk.
- Improve debug trace output by skipping meter write output.
- Hold the surfaces lock while resetting the master_surface.
- Don't crash when the master is on the right.
- Use selected device's info when building the Keys dialog.
- Fix one off error in timecode display that broke spaces.
- Use space as replacement for invalid characters on timecode display.
- Fix logic in timecode display update.
- Translation Updates:
- German.
- Korean (New!).
New in Ardour 6.8.0 (Jul 2, 2021)
- New Features:
- Playlist Operations (sponsored by Harrison Consoles)
- A new menu Track > Playlist, provides actions to create new playlists (or a copied playlist) for (all | rec-armed | selected) tracks.
- Playlist naming and grouping behavior has changed.
- When creating a new playlist, the user is always prompted for a playlist name (default value is Take.N where N auto-increments). In the past, some playlist actions didn't prompt for a name while others did, resulting in inconsistent naming.
- When a playlist is created, ardour assigns it a group-id (timestamp) which can later be used to recognize playlists that were created as part of the same action. In the past, ardour tried to match grouped playlists via name but this relationship was unclear to the user.
- A playlist group-id is also implicitly created when you first record to an empty playlist. This solves the problem in the past where user-created playlists would select together as a group, but the initial track playlist had no group relationship and therefore could not follow the group selection.
- The dialog accessed via the "P" button in the track header (editor view) has been adjusted: some esoteric playlist functions (copy from other track, share from other track, and steal from other track) are now hidden under an "Advanced" submenu. You can now also show more than one track's "Select Playlist" dialog simultaneously, the dialog is persistent rather than closing when you make a selection: this makes it easier to audition playlists ("takes") and copy from one to another
- Performance Meters: Window > Performance Meters now provides low level metering of the "DSP" taking place inside Ardour. Notice that the numbers display in the window are worst case which may not match the behavior of some other measurement tools (e.g. the main "DSP meter" in the upper right of the main window) or other DAWs. Average values (along with std. deviation values) can be seen by mousing-over any given meter. Thanks to Robbert van der Helm for his participation in the development process for these meters.
- Add support for requesting specific CPU DMA latency values (can improve DSP performance on some systems, and degrade it or have no impact on other systems). If you don't understand what this does, then it's probably best to leave it alone.
- Add extend-selection (to end of region) and invert-selection operations for MIDI editing
- New track edit operation "remove gaps", with adjustable threshold and "leave" parameters
- Add M4A import support
- MIDI Tracer window can now the instantiated multiple times, and come with their own port for arbitrary tracing
- Improvements:
- Add bypass control to ACE-Fluidsynth
- Add a MIDNAM file for Yamaha P-121/125 keyboards
- Do not trigger ruler display when changing between BBT subdivisions for the grid
- Crash fixes and speed improvements to ProTools session import
- Allow renaming of region/source cue markers
- Allow drag of region/source cue markers
- Alternative region/source cue marker promotion to CD markers
- Stop using named semaphores on system wide to avoid collisions with other software
- Ignore xruns when when switching to/from non-realtime export
- Remove duplicates in CoreAudio device list
- Refactoring of input port monitoring (significantly reduces DSP load caused by new recorder tab)
- Improvements to setting real-time priority for critical threads
- Better event loop integration for websocket support
- Automation control points no longer obey "lock edit" mode, which should only lock regions and notes
- Slip-contents drag made more accessible
- Some improvements to behavior of brush dragging
- Override global Ubuntu menu behavior
- Improvements to splash window visibility management during startup
- Bug Fixes:
- Fix memory leak in clock displays (up to 50MB/hour when rolling)
- Fix undo/redo of ripple edits
- Fix disappearance of regions and sources from lists in the Editor
- Fix behavior of "transport-play" operation from control surfaces
- Fix crash during MIDI bounce with processing
- Fixes for hangups during multiple timespan export
- Fix crash when removing a plugin with a control mapped using MIDI learn or a binding map
- Fix crash when using external position sync (MTC, LTC etc) and switching backends
- Fix deadlock in long running sessions (2-5 days)
- Translation Updates:
- Basque.
- Czech.
- Russian.
- German.
New in Ardour 6.7.0 (May 23, 2021)
- New Features:
- Dedicated “Recorder” tab/window
- Provides a compact view of your track’s record & monitor status plus a simplified timeline that keeps everything in view at once.
- Allows you to rename your device’s hardware inputs to match your studio connections: “Vocal Mic”, “Guitar Mic”, “Bass DI” (these names will be retained across sessions).
- Every hardware input has a high-precision meter with peak-hold, a scrolling waveform history so you can recognize your source signals, and a PFL solo button to listen to that signal (requires the Monitor section to be engaged).
- Vision and support for this work came from Harrison Consoles.
- New "Streaming" preset option for export (defines correct defaults for YouTube, Apple Music, SoundCloud and Amazon Music streaming services, particularly loudness levels).
- Allow import of SMF (MIDI) cue markers as global markers.
- Improvements:
- Improvement in GUI drawing speed on macOS (snappier, more responsive feel, less CPU load).
- Preferences window/tab significantly re-organized.
- Overhaul LAN dialog: add loudness graph, allow for custom presets, update layout to always show conformity analysis.
- Warn if the audio interface to be used differs from the one last used with the session.
- After drawing automation, automatically switch that parameter to "Play" mode.
- Allow "all-in" and "all-disk" monitoring options to be selected at the same time (just as we do for individual tracks).
- The tab/window select buttons at the upper right now use verbs to describe what you're doing
- Fix pasting processors in pre-fader position (they would end up in an unpredictable position).
- Keep mixer input/output buttons updated if available ports and groupings of ports change.
- Big clock window now correctly shows recording state.
- Audition tool correctly controls transport speed.
- Catch up with latest version of liblo (used for OSC support).
- Add preference to keep auto-spilled automation-lanes visible.
- Rename "Plugin Manager" to "Plugin Selector".
- MonitorSection: fade input in/out for AFL/PFL.
- Allow re-try when session-parameters mismatch.
- Allow auto-spill-on-touch for Fader,Trim,Panner and Mute controls.
- Allow removal of all xrun markers.
- Return/Enter does not have special behavior in the processor box.
- Make cursor visible on mixer strip gain entry.
- Increase visual contrast of insensitive faders.
- Change Solo button tooltip when using A/PFL.
- Foldback: spill follows selection.
- Foldback: improve GUI consistency.
- Add A/PFL button to foldback strip
- Spill only direct feeds - if track A sends to bus 1 which sends to bus 2 and you spill bus 2, only show bus 1, not track A
- Consistent "add track/bus" widget in recorder, editor and mixer tab
- Make group tabs insensitive when spilling sends
- Open add-route dialog on double-click or context-click in "empty space"
- Implement zero-latency convolver (available to Lua scripts).
- Indicate ambiguous latency, which can lead to capture alignment issues.
- Recover waveform-gradient-depth slider for ardour, and timeline-item-gradient-depth for mixbus.
- Include a loudness plot on export-report.
- Tweak export-report to fit on smaller screens (#8698).
- Set default master-bus meter-point to output.
- Overhaul export loudness normalization (include limiter).
- Disambiguate export formats with same loudness but different true-peak.
- Improve GUI behavior of the tempo dialog by preselecting the start BPM text field.
- Use -90dB as default threshold for silence trim during export, rather than -inf dB.
- Primary-w now closes Preferences window (like any other dialog/window).
- Inform user if there have been dropouts during realtime export.
- macOS: improve realtime thread scheduling.
- Rewind/ffwd controls can now optionally act more like a shuttle (incremental) speed control (see Edit > Preferences > Transport).
- Reduce default maximum transport speed to 2.0 to avoid DSP overload.
- Add new config parameter for auto-return after rewind/ffwd (set to false by default).
- Significant optimizations to speed of many operations affecting multiple regions.
- Use sub-menus for automation parameter selection if a processor (e.g. plugin) has more than 32 automatable parameters.
- Ignore JACK2 xruns during freewheel export for now.
- Redesign color mgmt when entering/leaving markers of various kinds.
- Change chat URL used via About > Chat to one that redirects via ardour.org, reflecting turmoil on the Freenode IRC network.
- Bug Fixes:
- Fix Windows process thread priorities.
- Fix double region freeze, stuck changes (#8701).
- Fix session loading when aborting latency measurement (#8691).
- Fix export race condition (and crash).
- Update drag-n-drop mininum movement threshold (#8686).
- Fix several incorrect transport behaviors.
- Fix crashes when rippling many regions.
- Fix incorrect port lists due to using a custom sorting method.
- Use correct harvid bind address on BigSur.
- Loading old route-templates now working.
- Use correct insert-position when adding route from template.
- Correct behavior when dragging a region to the dropzone (#8672).
- Video-monitor display fixed when locating.
- Fix deadlock when duplicating regions w/ripple.
- Fix insert + ripple undo/redo.
- Fix crash when consolidating range with automation.
- fix "trim to loop" region edit operation so that it applies to any region that intersects the loop, not just those spanning it.
- Fix shuttle wheel semi-tone mode.
- Ctrl-surface: do not name single-channel bundle ports.
- Consistent port-matrix channel name display.
- Fix crash if no audition synth is unset.
- Fix blurry text in connection manager.
- Remove redundancy between CD and DVD-A export formats, which are identical.
- Fix formatting of `-inf' on some Windows systems.
- Fix BPM button text display on Windows.
- Fix possible BPM button text overflow.
- UTF8 compatibility with default windows font.
- Fix undo after non-layered record pass.
- Fix crash at exit with classic Faderport.
- Include Tracks and Busses in connection dropdown (#8636).
- Avoid a crash when reopening a session saved with selected MIDI notes.
- macOS: Fix crash when timing issues alter startup process.
- Correctly show splash screen content.
- Fix a crash when separating ranges that include automation.
- Don't put empty "split" commands on the undo/redo list.
- Fix session-archive extraction on Windows.
- Prevent use of "recorder:" in audio/MIDI file names (causes strange issues on Windows).
- Fix potential issue during creation of session archives on macOS.
- Fix for lost/empty MIDI files when using snapshots (#8552).
- Fix analysis chunksize to be multiple of channel-count (#8631).
- Fix crash when removing custom transients.
- Fix export-analysis true-peak display offset when stripping silence (#8578).
- Collect Playlist::ContentsChanged() signals (#8626).
- Ignore pinout when copy/pasting plugins using Ctrl+c/v.
- Code changes to support newer glib definitions for atomic variables (no volatile specifier).
- Fix display of region peak information for trimmed audio regions.
- Foldback: fix removing last fb bus.
- Fix A/B plugins, skip internal but visible plugins (e.g. LAN).
- Improvements in audio/MIDI Backends:
- ALSA (Linux): add option to prefer interleaved access.
- ALSA (Linux): Fix swapped systemic latencies.
- ALSA (Linux): handle asymmetric systemic latencies correctly.
- PortAudio (Windows): Fix a problem with ASIO buffer sizes.
- Plugin-related Changes & Improvements:
- macOS (VST and AU)
- Fix Mac Plugin re/sizing.
- VST3:
- Linux: prevent registering multiple identical file descriptors.
- work around plugins with missing controller state.
- Fix MSVC related crashes.
- Add option to not show Micro Edit ctrls by default.
- Prevent recursive endless resizing.
- on macOS, add entitlements to get plugins working.
- pass a read-only state stream to the plugin (#8642).
- VST2:
- Support MacVST2 plugins with multiple child views (e.g. UAD).
- Fix enter/return ambiguity -- thanks to falktx.
- Included Plugins:
- a-delay: BPM is independent of the meter (quarter notes / min).
- a-fluidsynth updated to use Fluidsynth 2.2.
- Control Surfaces:
- Various: Fix one off in calculation of fader position.
- Binding map for Maschine Mikro MK2.
- Binding map for Alesis_VI25.map.
- Mackie Control: device description and profile for Arturia MkII keyboard/control surface.
- Mackie Control: if master surface has a jog wheel *and* a scrub button, button toggles between scroll and shuttle behavior.
- Mackie Control: set select state correctly during initial setup.
- Mackie Control: Don't crash if master fader is not avaliable.
- Fix OSC "/marker" feedback.
- Lua Scripting Changes & Improvements:
- Add Lua Bindings to access Bundles.
- Add lua methods to control range locations.
- Prevent denormals in Lua DSP state (LPF, Biquad).
- Add Lua binding to rename session.
- Fix Lua `get_processor_param` API.
- Fix Lua bindings for C++17/C++20 (#8683).
- Add Lua bindings to modify region gain curve.
- Lua API for sends, sidechains and monitoring.
- Add a Lua binding to determine Ardour version.
- Theme Updates:
- Update Clear Gray RecBox, and Cubasish theme colors.
- Translation Updates:
- French.
- German.
- Russian.
New in Ardour 6.6.0 (Feb 23, 2021)
- Ardour 6.6 is now available. This is primarily a maintenance release, although it does include several new features, including auto-show of touched parameters, tuning possibilities and keeping track of x-runs during recording. This release also sees the first official builds for Apple M1 systems. These are still experimental and are not part of the regular download system.
- New Features:
- Option to automatically show automation-lane when touching a control. (Edit > Show Automation Lane on Touch)
- Auto-shown automation parameters automatically put into touch mode upon graphically adding a new control point (this and the previous change makes editing automation much simpler/faster than it has been).
- Verbose cursor audio region peak display - press Alt or use internal edit mode ('e' shortcut) to see audio peak levels in an audio region.
- Keep track of xruns (overruns/underruns) per file when recording
- Option to how x-run markers in regions.
- Show x-run count in source-list by default.
- By default, don't create timeline x-run markers.
- Show per-region x-run markers by default.
- ACE Fluidsynth plugin can now process MIDI sysex messages, in particular MIDI Tuning Standard (MTS) messages.
- New Lua script to send tuning defined in a Scala file as MTS messages.
- New Lua script to send arbitrary 12TET tuning (A = XXX Hz) as MTS messages.
- The density (pixels-between-lines) for the editor grid is now user-configurable.
- Ruler can now show 1/64th and 1/128th note positions when appropriate.
- MIDNAM file for the Moog Grandmother.
- Improvements:
- Issues with snapping to grid fixed (or at least, dramatically improved).
- Improve MIDI note selection behavior to be more consistent with selection rules in general.
- Now possible to close & save even if the audio/MIDI engine is stopped.
- Eliminate/reduce fuzzy font rendering on many buttons (for HiDPI displays)
- Improving sizing of certain GUI elements containing variable text.
- Improved appearance for the BBT ruler.
- Prevent additional mouse button presses while dragging from interfering with the drag.
- Add new user option to control whether or not the default transport speed is reset when stopping (true by default).
- Clicking an automation track when in object/grab mode now adds a new automation point, making line drawing easier.
- OSC: commands targeting "strip" or "select" now use the same code for better consistency.
- OSC: Allow to specify marker name
- Creating monitor-sends from templates now functional.
- Bail out if export cannot be started.
- Do not bother to render waveforms in tracks displayed with extremely small heights.
- video-export dialog: only show abort/progress when exporting.
- Safely handle removal of sidechain input.
- Ignore inline-display unless plugin-meta data explicitly mentions it.
- Do not allow feedback override on foldback sends.
- Add input port signal meters, scopes and monitors.
- Add option to skip MIDI track input auto-connect.
- Indicate that plugin-window MIDI keyboard is not recorded.
- Sort input port signal meters by port name.
- More use of port "pretty names" (user-assignable names for all ports)
- VKeybd: include port-name in dropdown.
- VKeybd: show pretty-name in port-connector.
- Implement dynamic input port meters.
- Micro-optimization: pre-calculate pan-law.
- Hide "Midi Through" ports on Linux only.
- Hide hidden ports in port-matrix.
- Report failed connections when reconnecting ports.
- Retain "Virtual Keyboard" pretty name across engine restarts.
- Update Ctrl-surface MIDI port list when ports change.
- Disable vertical autoscroll for UI (editor) elements where it doesn't make sense.
- macOS: fix setting app icon file on recent versions of macOS.
- macOS: explicitly ask for mic/input permissions.
- Expose resampler quality (read-only)
- Consistent naming of mixer strip processors used for disk reading/writing.
- Updated MIDNAM file for Waldorf Blofeld.
- Various fixes for the MSVC project files.
- Bug Fixes:
- Problems with playhead movement while rewinding fixed.
- Stop after locate-while-rolling now works (again).
- Prevent silentfile over-read
- Fix mix-buffers-with-gain FMA (SIMD) implementation to avoid crackling in some situations
- Fix implicit Vkeybd MIDI meta-data.
- Fix Faderport1 port-connection.
- Fix typo in vst3-scanner --help text.
- Fix Aux-send copy/paste.
- Fix mp3 and video-export (ffmpeg/ffprobe detection)
- Fix send panner when copying sends.
- Fix fader font-size.
- Fix bugs where multiple threads tried to read from the same AudioSource (file)
- Fix invisible multicahannel waveform at rec-stop.
- Fix default track name patterns, remove additional space.
- Fix crash when requesting disk/in monitoring of busses.
- Fix tracking-text offset.
- Fix typo in OSC gain feedback message.
- Fix deadlock during export.
- Fix latency compensation for newly created tracks when using the JACK audio/MIDI backend.
- Fix automation context-menu state when reordering plugins.
- Fix crash when detaching Editor or Mixer w/o session.
- Fix mixer initial group-tab display.
- Fix race condition when deleting tracks.
- Fix round-corner backround of insensitive ArdourWidgets.
- Fix renaming export timespans.
- Improvements in the ALSA audio/MIDI Backend:
- Set pretty port names for audio I/O
- Fix slave device lookup.
- Fall back to nearest available buffer-size, rather than report an error
- Explicitly list millisecond buffer-sizes (helps with some newer laptop builtin audio interface that only support millisecond-sized buffers).
- Allow selection of clock-source when using multiple devices
- Retain port-connections of slave devices.
- Plugin-related Changes & Improvements:
- VST3
- Improve verbose scanner output.
- Allow multiple identical timer-handlers
- Allow multiple file descriptors per plugin UI
- Announce IPlugFrame interface support.
- Always pass buffers for all audio busses.
- Set I/O correctly.
- Pre-allocate AudioBusBuffers.
- Fix VST3 path customization.
- Fix plugin bus configuration.
- Use a proxy for connecting and passing messages #8481
- Allow filename mismatch inside the bundle.
- Backport VST3/musl support
- LV2
- LV2 "uri-map" extension no longer supported.
- Fix LV2 boolean Atom values size #8558
- Fix ACE.lv2 inline-display meta-data.
- Tweak fluidsynth performance on ARM CPUs.
- ACE Fluidsynth: consistent port-names.
- AudioUnits: Fix variable I/O instruments.
- VST2: relax MIDI port detection.
- Lua Scripting Changes & Improvements:
- LuaDSP use vectorized peak-finding.
- Add Lua bindings to modify plugin pin bypass/thru-map.
- Add Lua binding to get a file's basename.
- Luasession: load default session snapshot.
- Fix macOS Lua wrapper script env.
- Allow cast of ControlList to AL (for undo)
- Extend plugin parameter Lua bindings.
- Add Playlist::set_name() Lua binding & unique name check.
- Allow Lua bindings up to 11 args.
- ProTools Session Import:
- Race condition (random crashes/issues) fixed while creating audio tracks.
- Track naming scheme improved.
- Progress bar now covers entire import process.
- Import -> Cancel -> Import workflow now possible.
- Fixed crash while bringing in audio material from PT session.
- Translation Updates:
- German.
- Chinese.
- Russian.
New in Ardour 6.5.0 (Nov 25, 2020)
- New Features:
- Support for plugins in VST3 format (for Linux, Windows and macOS)
- Visit Preferences->Plugins and click "Scan Now" to find your installed VST3 plugins.
- There is no need to set search paths for VST3's though you can specify additional folders to search if you do not install them in the VST3 standard location).
- By default, if a plugin is available in both VST3 and VST2 then only the VST3 will show up in your plugin list.
- VST3 support includes support for the Presonus VST3 extensions, as use by (for example) Softube Console1 plugins and control surfaces.
- Improvements:
- On Windows build, support launching both JACK1 and JACK2.
- Prevent Session range markers from being hidden.
- Reduce the amount of work done when multiple locate commands are all issued in a very short time.
- Significantly speed up displaying of all MIDI automation lanes.
- Ask before showing 2000 automation lanes (can occur with certain plugins present on a track).
- Mark sessions as dirty if a meter type is changed.
- Improve various details of signal path latency computations.
- Use linear fades when crossfading loop end/start.
- Slightly speed up stem and direct-out export.
- WAV and AIFF files may now include session meta data tags (using id3v2 tags and WAV Info).
- Fix crash during startup on macOS Big Sur (Intel 64bit).
- Bug Fixes:
- Correctly sort concurrent MIDI events.
- Check for MIDI buffer overflow when merging into an empty buffer.
- Complain when MidiBuffer::merge_from fails due to buffer full.
- Fix a rare but important race condition bug in the code used to manage several critical real-time data structures.
- Fix handling of musical times between 0 and -1 beats.
- Fix handling of transport manager ports when switching session.
- Fix external/sidechain send solo propagation.
- Cursor position and text color when editing clocks fixed.
- Fix restoring implicit solo on session load.
- Fix the window a plugin GUI/editor floats over when using a detached mixer window.
- Fix AudioUnit window size for some non-resizable plugins.
- Fix various issues when using MIDI on ARM (Raspberry Pi).
- Fix bounce & freeze operations:
- Include main-out channel-count when bouncing the output
- Do not de-activate disk-reader and mains-out when freezing a track
- Ignore meter when counting channels
- Control Surfaces:
- Handling of MIDI encoders in "Generic MIDI" support is fixed.
- Websocket/JS support now properly supports MIDI strips.
- Lua Scripts:
- Fix for a bug in the "Tom's Loop" script.
- MIDI rewriting example script has been made more elaborate.
- Included Plugins:
- Plugins previously in the "a-*" family are now consistently referred to as "ACE" (Ardour Community Effects).
- Theme Updates:
- A few tweaks in the "dark colors" theme.
- Translation Updates:
- Basque
- German
- French
- Russian
New in Ardour 6.3.0 (Sep 8, 2020)
- Ardour 6.3 is now available. This is mostly a maintenance release, but the new Loudness Analysis feature will be very useful to some users. The usual steady drip-drip of bug fixes continues, and thanks to Ayan Shafqat, we now have up to date super-optimized metering code for Linux on both x86(64) and ARM platforms (Metering is the most computationally expensive thing that Ardour itself does).
- New Features:
- Loudness Analyzer & Normalizer (see Preferences > Mixer > Master). Calculates the Loudness (LUFS) of the session (or a range selection), and add a gain-stage to the master-bus to normalize the loudness according to various standards. There's also an additional "Conformity Check" for many common distribution targets (YouTube, SoundCloud etc. etc.). Thanks to Ardour/Mixbus user BachStudies for the nerdsniping encouragement and design ideas for this feature.
- AVX-optimized metering code for Linux.
- Neon-optimized metering code for ARM platforms.
- Double-click on track header (in Editor view) expands and contracts track height.
- Inactive tracks (in Editor view) now only show the track name, to emphasize their inactive state.
- Compile-time option to use SoundTouch for vocal time stretching (this is not currently enabled for ardour.org builds).
- Improvements:
- Foldback busses now default to pre-fader position, as intended.
- Added full GUI for setting foldback bus position to pre/post fader.
- Allow name and path column in editor source list to be manually resizable.
- Nudge forward and backward key bindings now work in the editor.
- Engaging loop play while rolling with no audio tracks now works.
- Dramatically speed up MIDI file loading by removing the seconds/time API from libsmf. An example "black MIDI" file with 24,134 tempo changes now takes 5 seconds instead of 5 minutes to load.
- Slider controller (used in many places in the GUI) now accepts dB when it controls gain, rather than a simple numerical gain coefficient.
- Do not auto-save when importing video.
- Fix audible amplitude modulation in de-click fade.
- If Ardour is the JACK Transport time master, it now supplies the bar start tick data.
- Ardour's custom knob in the GUI now shows when it is insensitive to user-interaction.
- Do not include VST parameters marked as non-automatable in list of automatable parameters.
- Prompt user for name when doring Range or Region bounces
- Add capture-for and channel count columns to the editor Source list.
- Allow editing the name field in the editor Source list to tbe edited.
- When consolidating a range of MIDI data, the new region should fill the range, not stop at the end of the existing MIDI content.
- Add a take-ID to bounced regions, so that multitrack bounces can be sorted/recognized in a list.
- Bug Fixes:
- Auto-play when locating to session start is now honored (again).
- No more (small) delay when starting to record while already rolling.
- Various fixes related to auto-connecting track outputs, particularly MIDI tracks.
- AudioUnits: do not call render callback for disconnected busses (fixes various 3rd party plugins).
- Ensure audio engine is active when doing plugin scans, since some 3rd party plugins try to access it (indirectly).
- Windows version now set HiDPI settings (may fix font aliasing issues on that platform).
- Fixed crash when removing master bus output channels.
- MIDI capture alignment fixed.
- Fix crashes when editing automation points.
- Fix occasional deadlock at session close.
- Fix occasional issues with mute button visibility in Master bus mixer strip.
- Control Surfaces:
- New MIDI binding map for AKAI MPK249.
- New MIDI binding map for Arturia Minilab Mk II.
- Browser-based (WebSockets + Javascript):
- Many improvements in stability, usability and what is represented in the browser control surface .
- OSC:
- panner type can be set (within the limits derived from I/O configuration).
- panner type feedback added.
- automation control for pan and trim gain added.
- toggle-roll can be used to pause or return to start, as expected.
- bug fixes.
- Lua Scripts:
- Lua bounce script improved.
- Lua meter point script fixed.
- Lua access to Transport State machine provided.
- Improvements to "List Plugins" script, which is now automatically loaded at startup.
- Included Plugins:
- Polyphony count for a-fluid (SF2 player) increased .
- Add crossfade and A/B plugins.
- Translation Updates:
- German.
- Italian.
- French.
New in Ardour 6.2.0 (Jul 21, 2020)
- New Features:
- Plugin list in the mixer view can now toggle between "Favorite", "Recent" and "Popular" (based on your own usage).
- "Insert random noise bursts" option in the export dialog allows you to deliver non-publishable mixes to clients for preview.
- New option to control placement of ellipses within long track names.
- New script to read Scala files and generate MIDI Tuning Standard system exclusive messages.
- Improvements:
- "goto-mark-x" action now available for binding in the mixer.
- Certain unconventional and sometimes invisible characters in session names no longer lead to undefined behavior.
- "Loop Range" action in marker menu now works as intended.
- When carrying out various MIDI editing on linked regions, be sure to apply them only once to the MIDI data shared by all the regions.
- Control surface/protocol names now shown in alphabetical order.
- Improve situation with deciding on which language to use for translation on macOS when user has more than one lanugage in use.
- Improved accuracy for MIDI Clock output.
- Keep aux send names when duplicating tracks.
- Retain connections to MIDI ports marked for use as control data.
- Automatically switch to input metering for MIDI tracks when they are record-enabled (like audio tracks).
- Plugin preset is now marked modified when LV2 plugin parameters are modified, even if done directly by the plugin.
- man page updated.
- Updates to the unastudia theme.
- Emphasize beat lines via modified theme colors.
- Bug Fixes:
- Reverse MIDI playback now works (again).
- MIDI Clock transport sync now working (again).
- Fix display of time in MIDI tracer window for certain kinds of MIDI ports.
- Automation write mode now correctly overwrites existing automation (again).
- Fix deadlock/crash when adding a sidechain port to a plugin.
- Opening sessions from Finder on macOS now works (again).
- Deeper handling of thread stack size limits on various Linux distributions.
- Fix playback after solo-section has been used.
- Auto-play now works after dragging the playhead (again).
- Fix audible blips caused by inconsistent monitoring state.
- Fix the behavior of automation points when performing a ripple edit.
- Numerous other minor bugs fixed.
- Control Surfaces:
- Browser-based:
- More compilation compatibility with different versions of libwebsockets.
- Improvements in client-side code components.
- OSC:
- Foldback sends can now be pre- or post-fader.
- Allow foldback bus duplication.
- Strip width feedback added.
- New support for the original Contour ShuttlePRO.
- Nektar Panorama map should now be visible.
- Fix panning knob control/directionfor CC121 and US2400.
- New MIDI binding map for M-Audio Oxygen 25 (3rd generation).
- Included Plugins:
- Add Dotted option for a-delay, since dotted intervals cannot be expressed with just integer divisors .
- Translation Updates:
- Japanese
- French
- Basque
- German
- Italian
- Contributors:
- Robin Gareus, Paul Davis, Ben Loftis, John Emmas, Daniel Appelt, Len Ovens, Luciano Iam, Matthias von Faber, Mister Benjamin, Nikolaus Gullotta, Nils Phillipsen, cooltehno, Johannes Mueller, Adam Bark
- Translators:
- Hiroki Inagaki (Japanese), Porrumentzio (Basque), Edgar Aichinger (German), Olivier Humbert (French), Vincenzo Reale (Italian)
- Theme Updates:
- Ben Loftis, Cooltehno
New in Ardour 5.12.0 (Sep 17, 2017)
- New Features:
- Improvements to the template manager dialog.
- Lua templates for tracks and sessions can now be created/scripted.
- New session dialog functionality improved, with new templates and track wizards.
- New track dialog functionality improved, with new templates and track wizards.
- Expose Lua bindings for VCA create/delete/assign/unassign.
- New patch selector dialog for MIDI tracks. This can be accessed by right clicking in the track header area.
- Ardour's generic GUI for instrument plugins now includes a keyboard to allow auditioning the plugin settings.
- Support for a new LV2 extension to notify the host about MIDI bank/program changes (e.g. driven by the plugin's own GUI).
- Faderport 8: double-click on select button resets gain to 0dB.
- Display playback-only devices when using JACK.
- General Fixes and Improvements:
- Fix MIDI quantization when not using US English.
- Fix selection of quantization note-end grid size.
- Catch exceptions thrown from Lua scripts.
- Fix handling of MIDI channels in the Transform dialog.
- Improve the heuristic used to display track/bus I/O connections in a compact form, as well a connection menus.
- Clicks on I/O menus now always connect, rather than toggle connected status.
- OSC: gracefully handle the user sending the wrong number of parameters.
- OSC: changing jog mode no longer stops transport unless started by scrub/shuttle.
- Secondary clock visibility is now a global preference rather than a per-session setting.
- The editor's summary view is now constrained to the extent of actual regions, rather than the session extent, by default. This can be reset from a right-click on the summary.
- New configuration setting for playhead auto-scroll speed. If you want to scroll quickly, it is preferred to zoom out first, then scroll.
- New configuraton setting to define how much zooming will be easily allowed beyond the extents of actual regions in the session.
- Generic plugin GUI: fix sizing and layout for automation state controls in plugins with many controls.
- Increase priority of the thread involved in automation recording. This fixes an issue with sparse automation recording when the CPU is busy.
- Update the included version of NSS (a secure networking library), to provide some features required by some plugins.
- Fix the way MIDI filenames are "bumped" during snapshots and playlist copying.
- Fix crash bug in Ableton Push 2 support, introduced in a recent version.
- Fix various tooltips to avoid problems with special characters in their text.
- Catch some exceptions during session loading.
- Relax some restrictions imposed by the Lua sandbox (for scripts).
New in Ardour 5.10.0 (Jun 15, 2017)
- General Fixes and Improvements:
- (Time) Range selection and copy/cut/paste now works again.
- Selection and copy/cut/paste for automation tracks now works again.
- Extend list of reserved track/port names (including translated versions of "Click").
- Fix another case where potentially illegal track/port names were not checked correctly.
- Context click on [Marker] > loop range should set loop range.
- Tweak/fix splash screen management.
- Update writable status of a Save-as copy of a Session.
- Add note name parser to convert to midi note number.
- VST parameter names can now be up to 128 characters long.
- Remember the state (shown/hidden, attached/detached) of the Monitor section.
- Ardour's own custom buttons now correctly reflect the initial state of the action they control.
- Stop crash after deleting a group.
- Fix double "Tape" in Record Mode drop down when adding new track.
- Support note name editing in midi list editor.
- Fix out-of-bounds waveform image rendering.
- Set Display Name for OSX/macOS.
- Fix libhid compile with /recent/ libc (GNU_SOURCE).
- Fix failure to laod old tempo maps.
- Use correct variable in BasicUI::jump_by_seconds.
- Tempo sections with a BBT start XML node are never ramped.
- Sort tempo map after legacy sections have been assigned a pulse.
- Include ParameterDescriptor in read-only control output.
- Implement basic AU parameter-printing.
- Pretty print control-outputs in generic-UI.
- Always create a deep copy of MIDI regions when copying playlists.
- Use correct names when setting MidiTrack properties.
- Use correct property name in generic MIDI surface.
- Allow export presets for 176.4KHz.
- When creating a new session after working on one, the "Cancel" button should be a quit button.
- Duplicate routes start off unsoloed to avoid issues related to upstream / downstream buses.
- If actively recording, prevent interaction between mouse and audio clock widget(s).
- Remove "Close" button from import-dialog (prefer WM close button).
- Import Dialog now behaves now other dialogs/windows when using Escape.
- Add route dialog now has "Add" and "Add and Close" buttons. "Add" keeps dialog open so user can add multiple templates.
- Fix recording-region graphics when using count-in.
- Fix reversed logic in legacy tempo secton detection.
- Tempo lines display subdivisions correctly over a tempo change.
- Fix crash when showing plugin-UI in safe-mode.
- Fix DSP in a-EQ, when parameters change very slowly.
- Fix playhead behaviour when synced to JACK tranport.
- When dragging notes, keep the note length correct even if tempo changes across the drag.
- a-EQ: Tweak knob layout to be less confusing.
- Make Import the default action in the Import Dialog.
- Restore the state of the autoplay button in the import dialog.
- Consistent "cancel/close" button position on the left.
- Lua:
- Add a file-chooser LuaDialog Widget.
- Update LuaDialog example script to include File/Folder selection.
- Add Lua bindings for VCAs and VCAManager.
- VCA & Automation:
- Do not crash when removing a VCA master.
- Fix relative grouped + VCA slaved gain.
- Fix Monitor Group override.
- Allow group gain sharing + VCA again.
- Remember subgroup-bus.
- OSC Support and Control:
- Add Automation control to OSC.
- Faders can select automation mode.
- Frame work to add automation for more controls
- Add Touch message for faders.
- Add fake timeout based touch.
- GUI settings take effect on first incoming message.
- Catch case of surface sending fader move before touch.
- Add optional paging to sends in select.
- Add option to send /reply instead of #reply (OSC1.0 compat).
- Select channel plugin support with paging.
- Allow set_surface and settings GUI to set send and plugin page sizes.
- Control Surfaces:
- Improve all control surfaces' handling of track/bus selection changes.
- Midi map for Alesis QX25.
- Update FaderPort8: new possible controllable parameters.
- Mackie Control: Momentarily light buttons when they are used to trigger a defined action. (This is mainly for F-keys)
- Mackie Control: If a button is not assigned an action, it will not light, hopefully indicating to the user that it is unmapped).
- Mackie Control: F-keys are reserved only for user-defined actions; no need for explicit handling.
- Mackie Control: configuration panel should display the profile name when any button action is changed.
- Mackie Control: Assign some F-keys for default user profile.
- Mackie Control map the well-known EQ knobs more explicitly, not heuristically.
- Mackie Control: Fix issue with strip "select" buttons that stayed stuck on.
- Translation Updates:
- German (Edgar Aichinger).
- Russian (Alexander Prokoudine).
New in Ardour 5.8.0 (Feb 28, 2017)
- General Changes and Improvements:
- Add Record with Count-in functionality accessible via Transport menu.
- Save and restore Location clock modes in Locations pane in Editor List and Locations Window separately.
- Improvements to sensitivity of actions in Region context menu. [#7077]
- Version keyboard shortcut configuration file (.keys).
- Add support for importing MIDI from Pro Tools Session files.
- Consistently use the term VCA rather than Control Master.
- When starting Ardour without any existing configuration files and not copying them from a previous version then still present the Startup/First time dialog.
- Control (Primary Modifier) and right click on group tab will present Group Edit Window.
- Shift (Tertiary Modifier) and right click on group tab will remove group.
- Support for QT5 lv2 UIs in bundles/installers from ardour.org
- Add support for relocating missing external files in Missing File dialog.
- Improvements to wording in Preferences and Session Properties.
- Change master meter type in toolbar via right click.
- Constrain VCA slave value to prevent overshoot and snap back on release.
- Use consistent Installer names for all platforms (Name + Version + Arch)
- MIDI:
- Separate bank selection into MSB/LSB in Patch Change Dialog.
- Plugins:
- Allow rescanning of VST plugins after changing VST path.
- Scripting:
- Update bindings and scripts for API changes.
- Updates to Lua scripting documentation.
- Add bindings for plugin reordering and add example reverse plugin order script.
- Add bindings for solo/mute and realtime control changes and update example script.
- Bind scripts via right click on Lua Action Script Button in Toolbar.
- Unbind scripts via Shift + right click on Lua Action Script Button in Toolbar.
- Allow scripts to define a custom icon when bound to a Lua Action Script Button.
- Include Audio to MIDI script in Bundles/Installers.
- Add ability to Load/Remove Session scripts in the Script Manager.
- Edit button in Script Manager now opens Lua Script Window.
- Add bindings to create Aux sends and add script to send multiple tracks to an Aux bus.
- Add Action Script Button icons for various scripts.
- Add example script to show/hide Tracks in the Editor.
- Translation Updates:
- Updated Japanese translation by Hiroki Inagaki
- Updated Czech translation by Pavel Fric
- Fixes:
- Use correct position when copying MIDI regions
- When moving MIDI regions with non-default meter and snap set to Beats, finish in the corect position [#7234]
- Reset window size when switching between custom and generic plugin UI.
- Fix timing of regions recorded before the musical origin (bar 1, beat 1)
- loaded correctly.
- Vertically constrained Region drag now working again.
- Properly update main window title when switching Snapshots.
- Toolbar height no longer changes with varying appearance options.
- Fix issues with Track and Mixer Strip order.
- Don't show hidden Mixer Strips when spilling a VCA.
- Undo/Redo now works for Snap position to grid via Region context menu. [#7246]
- Ensure toggle Editor & Mixer action always works with a detached Mixer Window.
- Percussive notes now shown in correct position while dragging during move/copy.
New in Ardour 5.6.0 (Feb 13, 2017)
- General Changes and Improvements:
- Speed up unloading large Sessions
- Speed up recent Session display, with many large Sessions and or snapshots.
- Transport control area layout changes.
- Add a mini-timeline to the Toolbar.
- Follow Edits has been renamed Follow Range and has changed behaviour.
- Allow customization of Toolbar via Preferences -> Appearance -> Toolbar
- Add ability to archive Session.
- Normalize audio when archiving to a fixed point format.
- Add more precise localization options to Preferences -> General -> Translation.
- Enable all types of Range locations (loop, start, end) to be glued to BBT.
- Allow preference for tempo to be expressed in divisions per minute or quarter notes per minute (General -> Tempo).
- Preference layout, grouping, wording/naming and tooltip changes.
- Add button to reset keyboard modifiers to recommended defaults in preferences (Editor -> Modifiers).
- Minor updates to Blueberry Milk, Caineville, Clear Gray and Cubasish Themes.
- Support added to compile on macOS 10.12 (Sierra).
- Modify playlist option labels in Duplicate Track/Bus dialog. [#7149]
- Support import of Tempo maps during MIDI import at selected position.
- Show context menu on right click on VCA track header.
- Support all drive letters on windows (with harvid version >= 0.8.2).
- Rename Bindings Window to Keyboard Shortcuts.
- Display name of conflicting keyboard shortcut.
- Allow automation line fill opacity themable.
- Add global monitoring controls to toolbar, enable visibility via Preferences -> Appearance -> Toolbar.
- Implement count-in before recording with fixed BPM, enable via Session -> Properties -> Misc.
- Implement record with pre-roll, accessible via Transport menu.
- Allow Editor toolbar and background to be themable.
- Allow changing Metronome level via Mouse Wheel on Metronome button in Toolbar.
- Display application version Session was last modified/saved with tooltip in recent session list.
- Scale Gain automation by masters current value if slaved.
- Add scripts to run Ardour under rr debugging tool.
- Disable VST scan in safe mode.
- Mark Session dirty when moving range/tempo markers. [#7217]
- Add undo/redo for changing marker lock style.
- Mark Loop button insensitive when no loop range is defined. [#7195]
- Name VCA's by number and user defined name if set.
- Add two export format specifications for stems.
- Include gmsynth.lv2 in application bundles/installers.
- Add option to use snapshot name instead of Session name when exporting.
- Save-As now working again as intended (no longer incorrectly asks about saving and does not incorrectly switch to new version unless asked)
- Editor Improvements:
- Duplicate action now works in Range Selection mode.
- Multi-Duplicate now works for Range Selections.
- Zoom to selection (z key) now zooms on both axes.
- Add zoom to selection (horizontal) action.
- Add preference (editor -> general) to zoom to selection in object mode.
- Left and right arrow keys move playhead to next/previous grid point instead of region boundary (old behaviour can be accessed with modifiers)
- Speed up patch change redisplay.
- Don't locate when clicking on region fade handles in smart mode with follow edits enabled.
- Add actions to set current meter/tempo.
- Display boost/cut gain after audio region name.
- Mixer Improvements:
- Display vca's at the end of track/bus list.
- Show isolate solo and lock solo status buttons in master mixer strip but keep de-sensitized to preserve mixer strip layout between track/bus types.
- Fix update of group color in mixer strip header.
- Show vca color on number label and top of the mixer strip.
- Fixes to visual alignment of gui elements in the mixer.
- Use a popup menu to select meter point instead of cycling through modes.
- Fix assign record enabled/soloed to control master. [#7204]
- Assign/unassign selected mixer strips to vca using right click/context menu.
- MIDI Improvements:
- Increase midi related test coverage and refactoring.
- Add midnam support for a-fluid synth.
- Allow sending immediate patch changes via midi track context menu. [#6830]
- Speed up midi ghost note redisplay.
- Save and restore midi automation controls.
- Add option to use track numbers, track names or instrument names from smf files when importing.
- Add track and instrument names to smf files.
- Add option to use tempo map from smf file on import.
- Access to midi track channel settings now only via context menu.
- Improved canvas redraw performance with many midi notes.
- Add the midi channel number to controller names.
- Implement copy drag for midi notes. [#5570]
- Prefer general midi synth (gmsynth) as the default instrument.
- Performance improvements related to display of sysex data.
- Plugins Improvements:
- Add support for mac vst hidden/favorites.
- Show plugin format (lv2/ladspa/vst/etc) in menus to differentiate between the same plugin with several formats installed (e.g au/vst).
- Allow to directly fan-out when adding multichannel instruments.
- Scripting Improvements:
- Add bindings for track/bus groups, miditrack::midicontrol, timecode conversion and audioregion rms/peak.
- Extend bindings for plugininsert.
- Add fader to trims script.
- Add script to add a-high/low pass filter to all tracks.
- Add create drum tracks script.
- Add example script to start recording on a midi event.
- Add script to delete x-run markers.
- Allow lua bindings up to 10 arguments.
- Add example script/snippet for importing file/s.
- Add script to save snapshot after exporting.
- Control Surfaces:
- Remove unused feedback option from osc surface controls.
- Add talent individual monitor controls to osc surface.
- Make surface numbering the same as port numbering in mackie gui. [#7219]
- Fixes:
- Fix update of Track/Bus color in the Summary and Connection Manager.
- Fix loading of Blueberry Milk and Clear Grey themes. [#7155]
- Fix issues in Export with trim enabled. [#6412]
- Fix crash when creating track via region drag when exceeding JACK connection limit. [#6496]
- Fix crash at stop when recording in non-layered mode.
- Fix parsing export trim threshold config variable.
- Fixes for MSVC compiler
- Fix video-monitor "sync-source" changes
- Fix a source of hangs when closing Session with ALSA backend.
- Fix possible crash when naming tracks with reserved I/O names. [#7171]
- Fix flickering in tempo curve when Markers are reordered.
- Fixes for sample locked Meter and Tempo sections?
- Fix crash when dragging sample locked tempo over a music locked Tempo while snapped to grid.
- Fix potential crash in peak file building.
- Fix possible crash when removing ports with JACK1.
- Fix layered record undo to include changes to existing regions.
- Fixes to ensure Command key generates MOD2 on OS X.
- Fix region position when dragging multiple regions to respect time base/lock style.
- Fix thread safety issues with invalidation requests in event loops.
- Fix inaccessible controls in Pin Connections window. [#7177]
- Fix crash when resetting with VCA peak-meters.
- Fix patch changes appearing outside of Region bounds.
- Fix toggling between Editor and Mixer using Korg nanoKontrol2.
- Fix Solo button on Faderport.
- Fix management/ownership of shared playlists. [#7150]
- Fixes to inactive Tempo sections.
- Fix possibly incorrect start position of MIDI regions after split.
- Fix crash when changing Pane widgets. [#7198]
- Fix MTC slave implicit return on transport stop.
- Fix some memory leaks in libpbd, libardour and GUI code.
- Fix undo/redo for Regions -> Edit -> Close Gaps.
- Fix continuous multi-selection in the Mixer.
- Fix a-fluidsynth bank select.
- Fix Generic MIDI controls so changes are propagated to the group (if in one).
- Fix a number of issues related snap with music locked regions.
- Fix a few issues with dragging MIDI notes including across tempo changes.
- Fix state restoration of VCA slaves.
- Fix saving state of Solo and Mute controls when slaved.
- updated translations:
- Italian translation. [#7180]
- German translation by Edgar Aichinger.
- French translation by Olivier Humbert.
- Japanese translation by Hiroki Inagaki.
- Russian translation by Alexandre Prokoudine.
New in Ardour 5.5.0 (Dec 3, 2016)
- Fixes:
- Work around MIDI devices sending invalid timestamps on OSX.
- Open Sessions with files referenced from removable drives on Windows.
- Various fixes for NetBSD and FreeBSD.
- Add MIDI Control Change at correct location when importing.
- Update Region colors on theme change.
- Fix/Support note name translations (e.g "Ré ♯").
- Allow loading sessions with missing external files. [#7067, #7114]
- Use distinct color identifier for meter clip indicator. [#7010]
- Prevent panners being reset when switching to Aux sends and back. [#6893]
- Use correct BBT offset when using Insert Time. [#7072]
- Fix restoration of key bindings assigned to Windows+key. [#7037]
- Prevent duplicate moves when selecting regions on shared playlists.
- Fix crash when instrument instantiation fails on track creation.
- Prevent infinite loop when calculating tick marks on low zoom levels.
- Fix LTC-generator 24h wraparound
- Correctly handle failed activation of Control Surface Modules
- Fix Master Track moving down one position in Editor after Session reload. [#7080]
- Mark Session state as changed when tracks are reordered. [#7093]
- Improved fix for playback of linked MIDI Regions [#6541]
- Fix to keep Meterbridge Window on top.
- Fix for non-working buttons in Monitor Section after second Session load [#7098]
- Fix LV2 state versioning with Session templates.
- Include Aux Busses in default strip types in OSC Surface [#7090]
- Fixes to Insert/Remove time dialog [#7072]
- Fix intermittent hang when stopping PortaudioBackend [#7095]
- Fix playlist XML nodes changing order on Session save [#7053]
- Fix crash loading u-he Diva VST plugin on Windows
- Fix Duplicating Tracks with Sidechains [#7117]
- Fix incorrect Midi Region length when splitting
- Fix for widget visibility with detached preferences window [#7002]
- Fixes when creating MIDI notes in Sustained note mode [#7126]
- Fixes when creating MIDI notes in Percussive note mode [#7130]
- Fixes to Cut Mode to make the cut line visible and respect snap modifier
- Fix inaudible Percussive notes being displayed at the end of the Region
- Fix crash when editing pitch of notes to outside visible area [#7135]
- Fix crash when deleting a MIDI Region while mouse over CC event
- Fix concurrency/locking issue with Event Loop request invalidation [#7049]
- Fix creation of playlists with duplicate names [#6523, #5681, #6497]
- Fix output display for non-plugin processors in the Processor Box
- Fix forwarding of output buffers by using correct channel count
- Fix loading, recording & saving MIDI with PolyKeyPressure events [#6948]
- Fixes to Duplicate Track [#7141, #7146]
- Fixes to OSC Control Surface
- Fix handling of pitch bend events by a-fluidsynth [#7140]
- Fix for reading CAF audio files over a certain size
- General Improvements:
- Many MIDI and Tempo related refactorings, fixes and improvements to performance, source code documentation and tests. (Thanks Nick)
- Include Session utilities in the application installers/bundles.
- Allow feedback loops from internal Sends to enable custom "Echo" chains.
- Improved performance when reading and writing XML files.
- Improved performance of Region export.
- Snap to Track Strip boundaries when scrolling with arrow keys in the Editor.
- Clicking on a Strip in the Mixer Strip List will move the Strip into view.
- Snap to Mixer Strip boundaries when scrolling with arrow keys in the Mixer
- Minor updates to Cubasish Theme.
- Compensate for latency/correct alignment when exporting the Master Bus.
- Improve automatic Track naming [#7092]
- Add option to zoom in the time rulers using button press and dragging vertically. [#6768]
- Speed up changes to AFL/PFL on large Sessions
- Large improvements in time to process Solo changes [#7119]
- Speed up Track/Bus creation time
- Restrict ALSA input/output device selection to valid combinations
- Speed up Track deletion when Editor Mixer Strip is visible
- MIDI:
- Many minor fixes and improvements
- Support MIDI input follows Track selection. [#6744]
- New MIDI -> Ports page in Preferences for managing MIDI port functionality and enabling MIDI input follows Track Selection.
- Added support for Type 0 MIDI files and add option to split channels into tracks on import.
- Added MIDI mapping for AKAI Midimix.
- New MIDI Note selection XML format, existing note selections will be lost.
- Improved editing in Percussive note mode
- Plugins:
- VST 2.4 plugin support on OSX
- Add functionality to Fan out an Instruments outputs to new Tracks/Busses (video demo explanation at https://vimeo.com/191024580)
- Allow LV2 plugins to provide Midnam XML.
- Increase maximum release time in a-comp.
- Sort Instrument list alphabetically.
- Updated internal versions of qm-dsp library and qm-vamp plugins.
- Allow LV2 Plugins to signal state changes and mark Session state as changed.
- Support LV2 PortGroup extension
- Add support for output-channel/bus grouping in AU plugins
- OS X:
- Mouse drags on plugin GUIs (editors) are now handled correctly when they end outside the window.
- Video monitor "full screen" mode no long spans all screens
- Scripting:
- Added or improved Lua bindings for VAMP plugins, TempoMap, Basic MIDI model editing, Inter-Processor communication, Source, AudioSource, Route, Panner, Instrument
- Add example script for Audio to Midi Transcription.
- "Sound Smasher" example script added.
- Add prototype script for converting polyphonic audio region to a MIDI region.
- Add example script for instrument fan-out
- Add example script to modulate parameters globally
- Add support for calling ARDOUR.DSP Lua functions from UI scripts
- Add example script to process Regions selected in the Editor
- Add MIDI LFO example script
- Control Surfaces:
- Added Support for Steinbergs CC121 Control Surface
- Activate/Deactivate plugins via OSC
- Added configuration files for the Avid Artist Control and Artist Mix Control surfaces.
- Allow Aux Buses visibility to be controlled separately via OSC
- Add OSC support to query strips internal sends [#7136]
- Add OSC support to query plugins and their parameters [#7137]
- Translations:
- Updated German translation (Edgar Aichinger)
- Updated French translation (Olivier Humbert)
New in Ardour 5.4.0 (Oct 1, 2016)
- Important bug fixes for MIDI (including looping), dozens of less significant but still noteworthy fixes and new features, plus the first version of our support for Ableton's Push 2 surface.
- 2 Major MIDI fixes:
- Looping with MIDI tracks now works correctly. Previous versions of Ardour could be easily provoked into either dropping notes or holding notes if the loop boundaries occured in particular places.
- If you use a musical meter with a denominator other than 4 (e.g. 5/8, 7/8 or 3/3), versions 5.0 - 5.3 of Ardour incorrectly stored the tempo when writing SMF (.mid) files. The SMF standard requires that tempo is given in terms of pulses per quarter note. Ardour 5.0 - 5.3 incorrectly used pulses per meter denominator (e.g. eighth notes). We have written a utility to correct files written in this way - please let us know if you need to use it. This issue only manifests when using the SMF files with any tool (including Ardour 5.4 or before 5.0) that obeys the SMF standard. We will gladly assist anyone negatively impacted by this error. Just get in touch.
- Abelton Push 2 Support:
- This version of Ardour has the first version of our support for Ableton's Push 2 surface. This is an expensive but beautifully engineered control surface primarily targetting the workflow found in Ableton's Live software and other similar tools such as Bitwig. As of 5.4, Ardour does not offer the same kind of workflow, so we have focused for now on using the Push 2 for mixing and editing and musical performance, without the clip/scene oriented approach in Live. This may change in future versions of Ardour.
- Fixes:
- Real fix for preferences window/tab (claimed to be fixed in 5.3 but actually not)
- Update clear-gray theme colors
- Add track/bus no longer allowed while recording
- Fix issues with finding files with duplicate names that were imported without copying them to the session
- Session lock dialog can no longer be closed using the window-manager "X" button
- Do not run normalize if normalize dialog is closed from the window manager
- Correctly and fully restore of bindings for mute and solo controls.
- (Windows only) Creation of Sessions with localized names containing characters that aren't in the system codepage now works. This also fixes the issue where a Session would not open when it was moved into a path with characters that aren't in the system codepage.
- (Windows only) Cleanup-Unused Sources and Flush Wastebasket now work even when paths contained characters that aren't in the system codepage(most non-ascii characters).
- Save and Restore analysis and soundcloud checkboxes in the ExportDialog.
- Do not crash when aborting Region trim using Esc key.
- Moving Session start/end markers now marks Session as modified.
- Correct disk usage/space reports on windows.
- Do not delete selected MIDI Notes while dragging.
- Remove crash at exit caused by key bindings etc.
- Remove crash when exiting after using and being disconnected from JACK.
- MIDI notes now follow changes in meter denominator.
- Drawing long MIDI notes with the grid/snap enabled no longer snaps them to the wrong position.
- Newly Exposed in Lua:
- PeakMeter
- Record enable/disable
- Session.request_play_loop() and Session.get_play_loop()
- Locations.remove()
- Location.name
- Plugin controls
- Glib:build_filename() (for portably constructing paths across platforms)
- example scripts to prepare a session for recording, and exporting markers as mp4 chapters
New in Ardour 5.3.0 (Aug 29, 2016)
- Fixes:
- Correct visibility of preferences dialog when the application starts with a detached preferences window.
- Ensure click free bypass for all a-* plugins.
- Enable normal operation when using an audio interface on OS X that is split into two "halves" (playback and capture), both with the same name. The Behringer UMC22 is one such device, but there are others already known to use this wierd and poor design. Our assumption is that the device(s) do not use the same sample clock for playback and capture.
- Improve layout of a-eq GUI.
- Update CC automation menu on when track selected channels change.
- Building with support for Windows-VST on Linux now works again.
- Correct "focus-on-clock" behaviour (bound to keypad divide key by default).
- New stuff:
- Extend lua bindings (processor selection, plugin-info).
- Single action/button punch in/out feature (available for control surface use or via shortcuts).
New in Ardour 5.1.0 (Aug 26, 2016)
- Fixes:
- Trimming regions with the mouse is now possible again, without changing program settings or hitting a 1 pixel wide strip.
- Fixed bug with the a-reverb plugin's all-pass filters causing poor quality sound.
- Do not alter the length of audio-locked MIDI regions when tempo map is changed, or when they are moved.
- Fix crash when using plugins that (a) have internal latency (b) request musical time information.
- The Linux installer now correctly handles spaces in the value of XDG_DESKTOP_DIR (so that, for example, "Área de Trabalho" will work).
- Correctly notify plugins about musical time and tempo map changes.
- On Linux, make Window Manager close/delete button (the "X" in most window manager window decorations) work for various dialogs.
- Undo/redo is now prohibited while actively recording, to avoid creating bizarre condition.
- Linking of aux send panners to track panners now behaves as intended.
- Entering brush-drag mode (by pressing the "b" key) no longer remains in effect until program close.
- Fix crash at exit if key bindings editor was open.
- Fix crash when using video with non-integer aspect ratio in a locale that uses comma as the decimal point character.
- Fix state restore in LV2 plugins (potential crash or deadlock).
- Tempo marker movement now snaps to the future grid, not the current one (fixes jittering tempo movement when snapping with long accelerando/ritardando sections).
- New Features and Improvements:
- New plugin: a-fluidsynth. Wraps the Fluidsynth SoundFont2 synthesis engine as a new sample player. Load SF2 sample libraries and play!
- Region normalization can now use RMS analysis.
- toggle-location-at-playhead.
- Tweak keyboard shortcut modifier definitions to avoid overlaps between different kinds of functionality.
- Allow first-move-direction constrained dragging of MIDI notes.
- Group, automation state buttons in track headers and strips are now dropdowns.
- Report quarter note rather than beat position to all plugins (reflecting a long-lived weakness in most DAWs and plugins that Ardour does not have but needs to work with).
- Make many buttons that trigger menus behave more consistently with respect to press/release behaviour.
- Ardour does not participate in "App Nap" on OS X.
- Extending an empty selection (Shift-click) now selects the clicked region (similar behaviour to most other sane software of many kinds).
- Duplicate tracks/busses dialog now has an "Insertion Point" selector to control where the new tracks/busses are placed.
- Update GUI correctly when trimming a MIDI region changes its position.
- Dropdown popup menus are now positioned much more appropriately.
- Numerous small layout details in the GUI tweaked and improved.
- Lua:
- Add new Lua APIs covering the following functionality:
- Track coloring and ordering.
- Session configuration.
- Stripable (base class of all Tracks, Busses and VCAs).
- Monitor Section.
- Add track properties example script.
- OSC Support:
- Add value feedback to main strip fader and and input trim control.
- Control/setup GUI redesigned and extended, including preset loading and remote port setting (for TouchOSC and other crippled OSC controllers).
New in Ardour 5.0.0 (Aug 23, 2016)
- Tabbed User Interface:
- The editor window, the mixer window and preferences are now available as "tabs" in a single window, with transport controls shared across them all. Working with Ardour on laptops and other small-screen and/or single monitor systems is now much easier. If you use multiple monitors, and/or prefer to have the editor, mixer or preferences in their own windows, you can tear them off and Ardour will remember those settings for the future.
- Control Masters (VCAs):
- Although track/bus groups have offered a certain kind of grouped-control over gain, solo, mute and more, traditional mixing consoles have long had group master channels ("VCAs") which allow you to combine both a single fader to control the group level while also allowing you to easily adjust the relative levels inside the group. For large projects, this can make mixing much easier to control. After a significant re-engineering effort, Ardour 5.0 has support for control masters. In a nod to our "offer more than 1 way to do things" approach, it will allow you to use either or both of the conventions for combining multiple masters:
- Nest VCAs (VCA 2 controls VCA 1 etc.)
- Chain VCAs (VCA 1 and VCA2 both control track or bus N)
- Tempo Ramps:
- Although Ardour has some uncommonly flexible options for working with tempo, one thing we've never offered before are "ramps" - continuous smooth changes in tempo, often known as accelerando (tempo gradually speeding up) and ritardando (tempo gradually slowing down). In 5.0, tempo ramping finally comes to Ardour.
- In addition, translations between audio sample positions and BBT positions during GUI operations retain the musical position even in the presence of tempo changes.
- Lua Scripting:
- 5.0 includes the ability to write scripts in the Lua programming language that have almost complete access to all Ardour internals. You can implement new functionality of many kinds, including writing synths, filters and other signal processing tasks since Lua is realtime safe. This release does not feature as much GUI integration as we would like, but it is still a deep and powerful new feature.
- The reference manual contains lots of information about using Lua. You can find dozens of examples in the source code's scripts folder, or browse them on GitHub.
- Sidechaining and Pin Connections:
- Ardour's ability to allow unusual I/O configurations is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it allows users to do creative things that are hard to do in other DAWs. On the other hand, it causes confusion when doing something as simple as adding a compressor plugin with sidechain support. Those 3 inputs? What are they? How should they be wired up?
- 5.0 sees an amazing new capability to manually control the internal wiring of plugins, if you choose to do so. You can switch the left and right feeds of a normal 2-channel plugin, or the outputs, or bypass inputs or outputs altogether. Adding "odd" plugins (with inputs and outputs) now becomes possible, with you in control of how the extra (or missing) channels are wired up.
- There is an excellent video from Harrison Consoles that shows this feature at work in Mixbus. Almost everything in the video is relevant to Ardour.
- Plugin Inline Display:
- In traditional DAWs, including older versions of Ardour, the only way a plugin can draw anything on the screen is by the DAW opening a new window to display the plugin's own editor/GUI.
- In Ardour 5.0, plugins can draw displays "inline" in the mixer strips, giving rise to many new possibilities. Note that this feature requires explicit support from the plugin - it does not make it possible to pack normal plugin GUIs into the mixer strip. Also, for the time being, these new graphical displays are for display only - inline controls for all plugin parameters have been available for several releases already.
- Built-in Plugins:
- For a long time, people have asked "what plugins does Ardour come with?" and the answer was "none". Now, Ardour 5.0 comes complete with 5 basic but usable plugins, derived from free and open source code, and curated to ensure that they work well with Ardour and for real world purposes. . In particular, all of them are dezippered for all parameters. None of them have custom GUIs, but are easily and appropriately controllable via the generic Ardour plugin GUI. They are:
- a-comp - A side-chain enabled compressor with the usual controls.
- a-reverb - A reverb that finds a balance between sounding good, using a lot of CPU and having too many controls.
- a-eq - A nice sounding 4-band parametric EQ with shelves
- a-delay - A basic single-tap delay line, with tempo sync
- a-high/low pass - Independent high and low pass filters with steepness up to 48dB/octave.
- These plugins run on all platforms, and should answer your basic needs without having to look for 3rd party solutions until you really need to. Sessions that use only these plugins will be portable to any other instance of Ardour 5.x or later, on any platform. We may add other basic plugins to this set in the future, based on user feedback and requests.
- Harrison's high-quality commercial plugins:
- In addition to the a-* plugins, official Ardour 5.0 bundles (from ardour.org) come with an unlicensed set of Harrison's high-quality commercial plugins for evaluation. The Harrison plugins are fully functional; but their controls will become locked shortly after the plugin's window is opened. Licenses to permanently unlock the controls may be obtained from Harrison's Mixbus Plugin store. The Harrison plugins run on all platforms, ensuring session portability.
- MIDI Busses:
- Until 5.0, it was at best convoluted to merge MIDI streams to allow for common processing or routing, for instance to a multi-instrument synthesiser. This release makes busses able to handle equally well audio and MIDI, which enables efficient workflow for virtual drumkits where the arrangement uses different MIDI tracks. Moreover, busses with both Audio and MIDI inputs are well suited for vocoders and similar plugins.
- OSC:
- Ardour's Open Sound Control (OSC) support for 5.0 has been completely overhauled. While limited compatibility with 4.x OSC commands has been retained, the command paths have changed. We have now extended the available commands to make it possible to write a much more fully-featured control surface using OSC. Notably there is significantly more options for feedback to the OSC controller from Ardour itself. 5.0 also features a set of redundant OSC commands that make it easier to use products like Hexler, TouchOSC and Lemur which all have significant limitations in the format of the messages they can send. Specific new features include:
- Banking has been added so that a surface with limited strips can still access all Ardour's mixer strips.
- A surface can tell Ardour how many strips to use for banking.
- A surface can tell Ardour which of two fader maths to use (position or raw dB)
- A surface can tell Ardour what feedback it would like (buttons only, or controls, or PH position)
- A surface can tell Ardour what kind of mixer strips it wants to see (audio, midi, buses, etc.)
- There is a /select strip that always operates on the selected strip (same as the editor mixer strip)
- More than one surface can be used at a time with independent settings.
- Those settings are saved with the session.
- You'll find full documentation on current OSC support in the manual.
- Theming:
- Ardour 5.0 includes 5 new color themes (all contributed by users), including Caineville (similar to Ableton Live), Unastudia (similar to Presonus Studio One), Cubasish (similar to Cubase), Clear Gray and Blueberry Milk. Note that the theming capabilities of Ardour have not changed since 4.0, but these two users took the time to use the color-choosing possibilities to their fullest. This is done with any need to rebuild Ardour, so anyone who wants to try this can (being aware that it is several hours worth of work to generate a completely new color theme).
- Check out all 6 themes in the carousel below, and click on any image for a larger image.
- GUI Changes:
- Create new track by dragging an instrument from the favorites sidebar.
- Allow copying of any processor settings (plugin, fader, meter, etc.) by dragging processor onto another of same type.
- Redesign keybindings editor to work with tabbed notebook, one tab per set of bindings.
- Avoid issues with splash screen hiding other windows at startup.
- Desaturate inactive rec-enabled button, to provide more contrast with active recording state.
- Consistent Location GUI layout including a “Go To” button.
- Don't show engine dialog when loading a session..
- Remove the splash-screen when changing sessions.
- Re-enable the "Show Tooltip" preference.
- Rhythm Ferret improved with new modes and options.
- Removing multiple tracks is now a one confirmation step.
- Option for stereo-only meters (prevents a multi-output instrument from showing dozens of meters in the track header).
- Import->Freesound tab is hidden while we update to the new Freesound search protocol.
- All user interfaces (Editor, Mixer, Control surfaces, etc.) use the same ordering and visibility. .
- Empty automation: first point creates a value spanning session start/end position.
- New style for text entryfields, now including a visible cursor.
- Make BBT ruler visible in default session.
- Re-layout import dialog (better fit for narrow screens).
- Do not show inappropriate dialogs at startup, even if they were visible at the last exit from Ardour.
- Properly sort port-names into normal human-sensible lexicographic order.
- Make the trim knob on busses show only if there is audio.
- Add Open Target Folder button to Export Dialog.
- Consistent track+group show/hide column layout in the Mixer sidebar.
- Adjusting a region's gain with the Range and Draw tools would sometimes affect the region in the track above. This has been fixed.
- Overhauled Region/Range spectrum analyzer: axis-labels, 1/octave weighting, log-scale display.
- Plugin Analysis graphics: show numeric values on mouse over, and offer A/B plot.
- Improve shuttle control response when grabbed.
- Make a right click on metronome really show click preferences.
- Improve placement of Dropdown popups.
- Preferences and other Dialogs:
- The Preferences Dialog is now side-tabbed, with all tabs expanded to make clear the full range of possible settings, and the overall height has been reduced. Sync options have been moved into a sub-node of "Transport". The color theme editor has been moved into its own tab.
- The Group edit dialog is now non-modal, so its appearance doesn't prevent interaction with the rest of the program.
- The Shuttle controller GUI drawing has been updated and made themeable.
- Control Surfaces:
- Added MIDI map for:
- M-Audio Oxygen 61 v3 (preset 1).
- M-Audio Oxygen 61.
- AKAI MPD32.
- Updated MIDI map for M-Audio Axiom Air 25.
- Loop toggle and Roll (play) toggle commands now work as they do in the GUI, for all surfaces.
- Export:
- Loudness normalization during export according to EBU/ITU standards. This supplements normalization based on peak sample values.
- Configurable export-silence trim threshold.
- Add option to auto-save post-export-analysis image.
- Align stem-export (When exporting raw track outputs with and without processing).
- Fix stem-export of no-input busses/tracks.
- Support for timespan realtime export.
- There is an excellent video from Harrison Consoles that shows many different aspects of exporting in Mixbus. Almost everything in the video is relevant to Ardour.
- Plugins:
- Adding a multi-channel instrument displays a dialog to configure number of outputs.
- Allow direct instrument replacement on a MIDI track in a single step.
- There are a number of powerful software synths in the AudioUnit format for OS X which have multiple output busses, mostly to try to provide some guidance to the user about "groups" of outputs. Although we still question the way this design is used by some plugin developers, 5.0 supports them just like all other AU plugins.
- Fix listing of plugin presets.
- Fix incorrect design of VST "in-place" processing.
- Support AU instrument in-place processing.
- Fix clearing of AudioUnit cache.
- Major improvements in handling AudioUnit plugin window resizing, whether initiated by the user, or by the plugin.
- Handle single-bus, non-variable i/o AudioUnit plugins w/multiple configurations.
- Provide VST and AudioUnit plugins with latency-adjusted BBT (musical time) information.
- Set latency of sidechain port.
- Generic GUI redesign - knobs, grid layout etc.
- Support for LV2 bypass extension.
- Listen for AudioUnit plugin-driven latency changes.
- Add initial MIDI sidechain if plugin has one.
- Support LV2 log trace messages.
- Support thread-safe LV2 state restoration.
- OS X:
- Fix dialog layering on OS X.
- Work to reduce the impact of slow down errant plugin GUIs for AU. This is a particular problem for users with Retina displays, because of the unfathomably slow code provided by Apple for drawing images.
- Miscellaneous Improvements:
- Bus trim control affects sends to the bus as well as regular inputs.
- Expand options in quantize dialog to include other beat fractions.
- Reset autoscroll speed to minimum when scrolling stops.
- Prevent deletion of last port using the Patch bay dialog(s).
- Add a try-autostart-engine option.
- Allow duplication of tracks with sends or load templates with sends/inserts.
- Adding new tracks (or opening a session with tracks) is now faster.
- Audio/midi files are now imported to "session start" by default (Too many users report they import their first tracks and can't find them).
- Record Safe: you can now ensure that some tracks are never record-enabled, no matter what grouping or selection status they may have.
- Primary-Shift click on gain automation button now sets gain automation state to all tracks and busses (may change in the future).
- Stop-and-forget-capture should not toggle transport state, only stop it.
- Once the user has explicitly set the session range end, playlist/range changes do not move it.
- Various transient-detection fixes (Previously, split region at transients followed by, trim+move+undo would not work).
- Add option to auto-save post-export-analysis image.
- Added additional metadata placeholders for post-export command.
- Switching automation-mode to “touch” writes the current value into the automation from session start to session end. This avoids the case where enabling “touch” on an empty automation track could write the wrong value into automation.
- Improve midnam (patch and parameter names) for Waldorf Blofeld.
- ALSA: allow environment variable ARDOUR_ALSA_DEVICE to identify a single, arbitrary ALSA PCM name as the only available/allowed device.
- Session sample rate changes:
- Never ever change sample-rate saved with the session after creation.
- Add notification if Engine Rate changes and mismatches session's SR.
- Update flow when loading a new session with different SR.
- Save As/Snapshot improvements:
- Allow snapshots and Save-As even if session is read-only.
- Change ambiguous "Save as" window title for "Snapshot & Switch".
- Start save-as in configured session-di.
- Bug Fixes:
- Prevent crash if a VST plugin does not implement effEditGetRect.
- Issues automating control ports on some midi synths.
- No more livelock caused by infinite/not-a-number control parameters.
- Force waveform images to be least 1px wide.
- "Collect Groups" works again.
- No waveform flickering during recording.
- Correct region splits when using Strip Silence.
- Errors when using timestretch tool.
- EAN (metadata) check digit calculation is now correct.
- No more lockup/freeze when deleting a region under specific conditions.
- Upsampling during import of some multi-channel files will no longer crash.
- MTC alignment now uses latency compensation.
- Using "Esc" key now works to cancel more stuff.
- Gain automation copy/paste works correctly.
- Various fixes for UTF-8 text entered by users or originating from imported audio or MIDI files.
- CUE/TOC file creation with non ISO-8859-1 chars in source text now works (by substituting underscores).
- Remove race condition when dropping ports (especially with Jack 2). Ports would remain and could subsequently cause crashes.
- Changes in logic used by Session > Cleanup to avoid endless recursion in sessions with deeply nested/recursive compound regions.
- Single click in TimeFX mode brings up region properties editor, as it should.
- No more crashes when loading a session with non-default clock modes.
- Remove "clicks" when switching fader and trim automation from "manual" to “play” while transport is rolling.
New in Ardour 4.7.0 (Feb 19, 2016)
- A variety of improvements and minor bug fixes. The two most significant changes are:
- A new dialog that shows a detailed and wide-ranging analysis of the audio file(s) generated by export. It shows waveform, spectral and level distribution views as well as peak and true peak level information and allows for previewing of the exported files. The development of this dialog was sponsored by Harrison Consoles, and represents another great example of their collaborative engagement with the Ardour development process.
- The greatly improved version of Mackie Control support that we're really excited about. Ardour's support for these devices is now very close to where we want it to be in terms of using the visibly obvious features of most Mackie Control surfaces. We still plan to go deeper into plugin control and more in future releases.
- Additions:
- New Post-Export Analysis window
- the new post-export analysis window
- Add display of signal level during latency measurement
- Add support/options for the Presonus FaderPort footswitch
- OSC: allow logging/debugging of incoming messages
- OSC: add new messages addresses to allow enhanced control with TouchOSC
- Add a "zoom-to-10-seconds" action/menu item
- Add an "record-enable all tracks" action/menu item
- Add option to always use mouse position for zoom focus, making zoom scroll behaviour consistent across rulers and main track area
- New MIDI binding map for Akai MPK Mini, and Novation LaunchKey 25
- Add a button to the Audio/MIDI Setup dialog to choose between the callback and blocking version of the Windows audio/MIDI I/O backend. There still appear to be devices and conditions where one of these choices gives better results than the other, but unfortunately no way to tell without just trying them both.
- Improvements:
- Turn out all lights on a Presonus FaderPort when exiting the program
- Duplicate range can now work with multiple time ranges
- When using stationary playhead mode, keep the playhead centered
- Group edit dialog is no longer modal, so you can continue working while it remains visible.
- Take snap settings into account when stretching regions
- "Insert Time" now ignores mouse as the edit point, just like "Remove Time"
- Implement MIDI device enumeration and latency calibration for the Windows audio backend (PortAudio)
- Allow removing the timespan name from export filenames
- Subtly improve general scrolling behaviour in editor window
- Improve import of ProTools 5 sessions
- Add preliminary support for import of ProTools 10 and 11 sessions
- Better support for VST plugins with an interest in transport state
- Make it clear that a missing plugin may have been blacklist
- Improve the accuracy of the tap-tempo estimator
- Fixes:
- Various fixes for incorrect visibility of MIDI ghost notes in the GUI when editing.
- Toggle transport state (normally bound to the space bar) now works even when using JACK Transport
- Fix incorrect movement of regions glued to BBT time after a tempo change
- Improve handling of MIDI note selection in the GUI, dramatically speeding up some operations in larger sessions
- Generic MIDI: midi controller buttons now trigger only on the push message, not the release
- Generic MIDI: if a CC message is bound to a toggle control, toggle the control only when the incoming value is greater than 0x40 (64)
- Force LV2 plugins to save some state when creating track or session templates
- Fix ipMIDI support on Windows (affects use of SSL Nucleus control surface)
- Fix behaviour of fader numeric displays when leaving an active automation state
- Allow use of UTF8 characters in filenames during export
- Fix an unlikely, subtle bug on OS X when the list of available audio devices is changed by the operating system (e.g. device hotplugging)
- Fix a crash when an export is cancelled before it finishes
- Fix display of MIDNAM-provided note names while dragging MIDI notes
- Fix crash when right (context) clicking in the name box of the selected track
- Fix inactive MIDI track headers on session reload
- Fix failure to show text selection in track name entry boxes
- OS X: Cmd- now works in some situations where it was failing before
- Avoid generating zero-byte files when exporting using normalize + trim silence at end
New in Ardour 4.6.0 (Jan 11, 2016)
- Notable new features - deep support for the Presonus FaderPort control surface, Track/Bus duplication, a new Plugin sidebar for the Mixer window - as well as the usual dozens of fixes and improvements to all aspects of the application, particularly automation editing.
- PLUGINS (PLATFORM-INDEPENDENT):
- Add a check button in the session loading dialog to disable all plugins.
- Improve layout/appearance/functionality of Plugin Manager dialog.
- Fixes for compatibility with LV2 1.0.0.
- Clicking on a plugin LED holding Ctrl-shift toggles all plugins/processors in this strip (except the fader).
- Fix monitoring of plugin parameter changes with LV2 and AudioUnit plugins, to avoid feedback loops between the plugin and the GUI.
- Fix an issue with loading sessions containing certain LV2 plugins.
- Show VST plugin search paths (read-only) in Preferences dialog.
- Fix LV2 plugin state for copied plugins.
- Properly copy plugin state when duplicating tracks/busses.
- Save/restore plugin states as part of track templates.
- NEW PLUGIN SIDEBAR (MIXER WINDOW):
- drag/drop favorite Plugins directly to a track/bus.
- allow creating plugin-presets by dragging a plugin to the sidebar.
- allow to add a plugin or preset to all selected routes (double-click).
- allow dragging plugins directly from the plugin-manager to a track/bus.
- save/restore custom order of favorite plugin list.
- manage favorites and delete presets from the sidebar’s context menu.
- GUI:
- Report on progress while stripping silence from tracks.
- Fix fine-adjust modifier overriding snap modifiers.
- Clicking on an already selected note when many are selected makes it the only selected note (same behaviour as regions and control points).
- Allow use of tooltips to be enabled/disabled from Preferences.
- Mixer list pane can now be shrunk to zero width.
- Dialogs and unparented windows now default to the current pointer position.
- Add relative snap when moving markers.
- Increase the minimum size of the recent session scrollview.
- Don't make hidden automation controls visible, ever.
- Allow numerical entry for setting gain values in Preferences dialog.
- Show an informational dialog when opening IRC via Help -> Chat, to try to clarify to new users that they should post a question and then wait, not leave after a few minutes.
- When adding a single plugin, immediately show the plugin GUI (except when using drag-n-drop to add the plugin).
- Improve the layout of various widgets in the Preferences dialog.
- Add "Delete all Unused Playlists" and "Keep All Playlists" options to cleanup dialog.
- Fix "Crop to Range" operation to include all (selected) regions covered by the range, not just those that cover the start.
- Fix "Fill Track" to avoid single-sample regions.
- Keep track of meter visibility.
- Hide region frame outline when region is less than 2 pixels wide.
- Continue normal scrolling if the pointer is over the dropdown menus in the track header of a MIDI track.
- Fix misplacement and improve grouping of various audio and MIDI ports in patchbay(s).
- use the correct environment variable to block loading of GTK+2 resource files (changed back in 2002 but never updated in our source code).
- Makes rows in the theme manager selectable, making it easier to link an object to a color.
- Fix incorrect keyboard focus after deleting a marker.
- Allow hiding and showing the mixer list.
- Disable threaded waveview rendering. This is, sadly, a regression from previous releases, and will slightly slow down the apparent speed of waveform drawing. However, it was causing unacceptable crashes while recording, and until we can be absolutely certain that the issue has been correctly identified and fixed, we are disabling it.
- Add a button to master bus strip to show/hide monitor section.
- Reduce width of monitor section by 25%.
- Allow addition of plugins to monitor section.
- Fix monitor section state restore (per-channel dim, mute etc.).
- Prefill snapshot dialog name field with current snapshot name .
- Use correct position when finishing tempo and meter marker drags.
- Fix for inoperative keyboard modifiers after auto-scrolling.
- Add more items/links to the Help menu.
- Add confirmation dialog for overwriting existing files to most (all?) file dialogs.
- Include platform-specific common disk volumes to file selection dialogs.
- MIDI:
- Snap modifiers now work on MIDI Notes when the grid is disabled.
- Gray out unavailable MIDI note context menu items rather than hiding them.
- update MIDI channel buttons when their mode is changed.
- Enable horizontal scrolling in MIDI regions even when a note is selected.
- Include the "Transform..." option in the MIDI region context menu.
- Introduce "Transpose..." option in the context menu for selected notes.
- Significantly speed up some MIDI note editing operations, and their impact on session loading times.
- Make MIDI Panic message work even when seamlessly looping.
- Do not clear MIDI buffers when processing cycles are split, and make seamless MIDI looping work correctly.
- Removing shorting of inserted notes by 1 tick.
- Fix overlapping MIDI note resolution.
- Better alignment of note end times with the grid.
- Fix issues with large amounts of MIDI data caused by limits on the size of Standard MIDI File format variable-length-quantities.
- CONTROL SURFACES:
- Deep support for the Presonus Faderport device. This is fully documented in the Ardour Manual.
- Mackie Control devices saw a lot of subtle changes which will be documented in the manual in the near future. It is now possible to control input trim, sends and more from a Mackie surface.
- Add easy-to-use MIDI port selectors to the Generic MIDI settings dialog
- Add a MIDI binding map for the Yamaha KX25
- Add a MIDI binding map for the Novation Impulse 49
- Add full support for NPRN MIDI controllers, allowing their use in MIDI binding maps
- Add an explicit "Show settings" button to the Control Surfaces preferences dialog to help users who do not read.
- Ensure that when control surfaces are enabled/disabled/re-enabled, they continue to be notified about the state of the session.
- OSC:
- Allow use of broken apps such as TouchOSC and Lemur with Ardour's OSC support
- (These apps/devices don't really follow the spirit of the OSC specification because they require all messages to include at least one argument. The new /ardour/pushbutton/.. OSC "namespace" can be used to provide OSC addresses for messages that always have one floating point argument; messages to such addresses are ignored unless the argument is 1.0)
- Add notification of changes in transport speed or record enable status:
- AUTOMATION:
- Make control point selection more consistent
- Fix display of automation data for toggled controls
- Automation recording now has undo-per-pass, not undo-per-touch
- Add undo for region gain point selection
- Fix incorrect snap when adding region gain points
- Correctly select the control point to be deleted with shift+right click
- Ctrl/Cmd-drag adds or toggles rubber band selection of automation control points
- Show verbose cursor control point values in internal edit mode
- Prevent inadvertent overwriting of automation data
- Fix mute automation playback
- Fix incorrectly positioned automation control points
- Handle pasting data from non-toggled to toggled automation tracks
- Fix crash when moving tempo markers with automation present in MIDI tracks:
- GENERAL CHANGES/IMPROVEMENTS:
- Disable follow-edits and auto-return when synchronized to an external positional clock source.
- Fix crash when creating subgroup busses.
- Fix some cases where a session was incorrectly marked as changed/not-changed.
- Speed up session loading by avoiding unnecessary duplication scanning of MIDNAM files.
- Reduce session close time caused by some poor programming design.
- Revert back to use mjpeg as the default video codec. Anecdotal evidence suggests that mpeg4 causes issues on some platforms.
- Fix an issue where timers for metering prevent session loading from completing (also speeds up session loading).
- Duplicate regions now uses correct position (previously was off by one sample).
- Improved handling of reserved track/bus/send names ("Master", "Click" etc).
- Allow metronome to operate while varispeeding.
- Add "Duplicate Track/Bus" functionality.
- Make it possible to rename the session root folder without any side effects.
- Provide a user-preference for pre-roll.
- When loading a session, default to the most-recently-used snapshot.
- Prevent deletion of playlists not used while a track is frozen.
- Restore last used driver and device for a given audio/MIDI I/O backend.
- Prevent concurrent peak (waveform image) file initialization.
- Prevent crash when closing a session while some audio data analysis is still underway.
- Restore functionality for measuring insert latency.
- Load/save measured insert latency with session.
- Add a mechanism to allow audio latency updates without restarting the backend.
- Avoid uninintentional, unnecessary rebuilds of peak (waveform image) files.
- Fix bug with solo/mute state when reopening a session with a soloed bus.
- Explicitly disallow looping while synced to an external positional source.
- Update available positional sync sources when audioengine is restarted.
- Prevent addition of markers within 1/100th second if transport is stopped.
- OS X:
- Update the API used on OS X to discover AudioUnit plugins, to be compatible with (a) newer versions of OS X (b) newer plugin releases (notably Waves Audio latest versions).
- Add a horrible hack to keep the program GUI responsive even when AudioUnit plugins with broken (rapidly redrawing) GUI's/editors are visible.
- Fix display of deprecated Carbon-based GUIs for some AudioUnit plugins.
- Fix for a crash on OS X caused by changing audio device state while recording.
- Add build support for OS X El Capitan.
- Fix crash when opening invalid audio/MIDI files on OS X.
- Correctly allow opening ardour via a double-click on a .ardour file inside Finder on OS X.
- Fix display of AudioUnit factory presets, so that they are shown even when there are no user presets.
- Re-add AudioUnit cache/blacklist management.
- Updated Translations:
- Russian,French,German
New in Ardour 4.4.0 (Oct 16, 2015)
- Substantive Changes/Features/Fixes:
- Fixed solo logic in deep ways. Most notably this prevents various "stuck solo" problems, but also a number of other issues with solo when using complex routing between tracks and busses.
- Fixed loop recording (inadvertently broken for several releases).
- Added support for RF64 and MBWF audio file formats. These are both 64 bit file formats, capable of recording impossibly large amounts of audio. MBWF is the 64 bit version of Broadcast WAV. .
- When using either format, if recorded files are smaller than the RIFF (WAV) size limit, convert the header to RIFF so as to be compatible with normal WAV-handling software.
- General Changes:
- "Save As" will refuse to write to an existing folder/directory.
- "Save As" now defaults to the current session name as the name of the new session, making it easier to add suffixes or otherwise tweak the name.
- Allow export of loop range without actually looping.
- Improve CPU AVX support detection.
- Fixed locating to current wallclock time for large time values.
- Fixed an issue where if an audio region was locked and locked to video, the audio-region always stayed put and the video could only be moved forward.
- Fixed various potential issues at session closing.
- Improve error reporting from AudioEngine when trying to configure audio hardware.
- Provide more details if a sessions fails to be created.
- Improve loading speed for large sessions (1000 tracks).
- Fixed a deadlock when removing tracks/busses and using JACK1.
- Prevent importing files with names like "Master" or "Click" from causing session breakage. This also applies to attempts to name tracks or busses with similar names.
- Ensure that correct audio is heard when region layering is changed.
- Use a single consistent method for computing DSP load on all platforms, with all backends.
- Avoid creating excessively short regions during Strip Silence operation.
- Avoid possible endless loop while detecting silence.
- Reduce chances of a bug in the OS X locale libraries from causing crashes.
- Fixed duplication of multiple selected regions.
- Correctly and consistently initialize track/bus group properties.
- Fixed crash during session region cleanup.
- Ensure identical XML in session files if the session does not change, thus allowing tracking state changes in a revision control system (e.g. git).
- Bring Ardour's Broadcast WAVE USID value into compliance with EBU-R99.
- Fixed install on systems where using su(1) changes directories.
- Fixed broken onset analysis.
- Plugins:
- Refuse to load LV2 plugins if their buffer size requirements cannot be satisfied.
- Do not list LV2 plugins that cannot be used because they require a fixed blocksize.
- Generally improve handling of missing plugins so that sessions are not damaged by the temporary unavailability of a plugin.
- Fixed the position of cut/copy-and-pasted plugins.
- Fixed AudioUnit port count, which allows loading various Native Instrument plugins such as Reaktor 5.
- Added command line option to completely disable plugins.
- Fixed handling of VST audioMasterPinConnected callback.
- Allow loading of huge (10MB) VST plugin state.
- GUI:
- Fixed waveform display issues when changing waveform shape from rectified to normal or vice versa.
- Added a reset option to the context menu for the shuttle control.
- Allow creation of new points on a region envelope by clicking on the envelope line.
- Added column titles in the list of "Recent Sessions".
- Alter "Stop" button in the Audio/MIDI setup dialog to function as a "Start/Stop" button, and remove the "Apply" button.
- Fixed issues where waveform display used the wrong data.
- Cancel button for Import dialog is now a Close button.
- Change OK button on Import dialog to "Import".
- Correctly display plugin parameter values when dragging automation points/lines.
- Fixed log-scaled automation parameter display.
- Visually indicate regions waiting for their audio peak data to be generated.
- Fixed inconsistent text sizing in the editing canvas.
- Added avoiding GPU rendering to preferences dialog. This is helpful on some Linux systems with buggy video device drivers. See Edit > Preferences > GUI > Disable Graphics Hardware Acceleration.
- Allow overriding lock-to-video when moving video or audio.
- Fixed drawing of short cross fades.
- Sort "Recent Sessions" by modification time.
- Don't try to split a region when dragging.
- Update Import dialog options when/if track selection changes.
- Fixed marker display after a marker is removed.
- When editing a clock display, swallow illlegal keys rather than passing them onto the main window where they might have some unintended effect.
- Primary-Shift-click on the solo lock button now applies to all tracks/busses, consistent with Primary-Shift-click on other buttons.
- Avoid a case where the color of selected text was the same as the background, making it invisible.
- Correctly set waveform height when switching between stacked and overlaid view modes.
- Make all entries in the track list context menu actually work.
- Fixed incorrect setting for "Import to Region List" on first use of the import dialog.
- Avoid duplicate shortcut folders in file browsers.
- Click/Metronome:
- Added an easy way to reset the click sound(s) to their defaults.
- The click sounds are now normalized to -6dBFS.
- Allow enabling/disabling of the click "emphasis" sound.
- MIDI:
- MIDI Tracer window now shows MSB of appropriate messages.
- Fixed a subtle bug in ordering of MIDI events that caused missing note-off messages.
- Highlight notes based on mouse position on track header keyboard.
- Exclude MIDI CC parameters with no data from being displayed when "Show Existing Automation" is chosen.
- Fixed issues with linked (cloned) MIDI regions on different tracks.
- Fixed issues with de-selecting MIDI notes.
- Handle a missing MIDI file without crashing.
- MIDI/Mackie Control Surfaces:
- Save/restore generic MIDI control surface "motorized" setting.
- New Mackie Control device files for configurations with 3 surfaces.
- A substantial amount of work has been done on Mackie Control support. There is no simple summary that would describe all the changes, but suffice it to say that (1) it works much better (2) it is easier to get started (3) has been tested on an even wider range of equipment.
New in Ardour 4.2.0 (Aug 14, 2015)
- General Changes:
- Fix region brush drag
- Speed up removal of multiple tracks/busses
- Speed up solo operations applied to many tracks/busses
- Fix several bugs with reversible commands
- Try to avoid coincident tempo/meter markers when removing time
- Improve window layering relationship between editor & mixerbridge
- Add keybindings for region layering (2ndary-9 (lower), 2ndary-0 (raise)
- Adjust some window keybindings. (2ndary-C is now the big clock, 2ndary-B is the meterbridge, 2ndary-V is the video window
- Fix swing quantization
- Fix pre-fader send mute-point so that input trim still works when mute is engaged
- Add configuration variable for maximum shuttle speed
- Improve size and position of panner value displays
- Save auto loop range and more markers in session templates
- Mark session dirty after various region property changes
- No longer save session after adding tracks/busses
- Fix cleanup of any temporary files after export
- Fix looping when using loop-is-mode and seamless looping
- Add 176.4kHz to export sample rate list
- Fix unintentional limits on track name length
- Disk buffering is now defined by presets, with 3 possible settings as well as custom
- When using loop-is-mode, enabling recording cancels loop
- Attempt to reconnect LTC ports after a backend change or reset
- Catch attempt to save a session with its current name as the new name
- Fix flickering of certain popup windows
- Indicate port-connections of non-track type on the mixer strip output button. (Previously a MIDI track with synth showed "—" for the output even if the audio output ports were connected, because only MIDI connections were displayed on the button).
- Avoid crashing when cleanup unused sources
- Fix various issues when deleting midi region during step-edit
- Stationary playhead implies follow playhead, so make it so.
- improve performance and reduce visual jitter when using stationary playhead
- Add new configuration parameter for the default meter type to use with new tracks/busses
- Add context menu to hide/show Midi-tracks — fixes #6430
- Use “1” as the small-step size when incrementing/decrementing integer controls/parameters
- Use power of 2 log-scale for logarithmic controls/parameters.
- Remove insanely fast meter fall-off (this gave an inaccurate view of meter levels)
- Fix solo isolate implementation to handle more complex routing pathways
- Remove “Refresh” button in Plugin manager; use Preferences > Plugins
- Fix auditioning on systems with larger disk read chunk sizes.
- Do not crash if taglib cannot open a file
- Fix state restoration in Audio/MIDI setup
- Fix auditioning of audio at very different sample rates
- Fix loss of variable amounts of final audio when importing from files with different sample rate than Ardour is using.
- Plugins:
- For AU and VST plugins, differentiate between "scanning" for plugins (which checks that known plugins are still installed), and "discovery" (which potentially finds new plugins on the computer).
- Offer to discover (all) plugins at first start
- Fix LV2 freewheeling support
- Correctly inform LV2 plugins of entire possible block size range (fixes some LV2 plugins which rely on this being correct)
- Fix audio buffering for VST plugins (fixes lack of output or phased output from a variety of VST plugins)
- With AU plugins, ensure that the plugin settings are used during plugin signal processing analysis
- For AU plugins, when given a choice of picking any channel output count, choose stereo (not the master bus output count)
- VST cache is now per user and per architecture (no longer system-wide) — this allows parallel installs of 32 & 64bit ardour
- By some unexplained magic, various AU plugins now load without crashing (notably several from Native Instruments such as Kontakt)
- Add optional verbose option for VST plugin scanning
- Automation Editing:
- Add undo/redo for touch mode and write mode
- Selection and undo/redo behaviour when choosing control points
- Display selected control points in region gain lines
- Display selected points in internal edit mode
- Allow dragging of region gain lines in internal edit mode
- Make automation line / gain line cursors consistent.
- Clicking an automation track line without a move adds a point on the line.
- Fix line drag crash
- OS X:
- Fix automatic creation of an aggregate device on OS X 10.5
- Fix MIDI data parsing in the CoreAudio backend
- Add Cmd-h keybinding on OS X to hide application
- Improve enabling/disabling OS X main menu during "Locked" state
- On OS X, ignore .DS_Store files created by operating system when doing "Save As"
- Fix export issue on OS X Mavericks
- PowerPC support returns (ie. Ardour for older Apple machines)
- Partial workaround for lack of thread-safety in OS X implementation of loadlocale(). This is a serious crashing bug in Apple's code that affects other applications on OS X, but it is unpredictable, both in terms of its effect and when it might occur. This workaround deals with the most common case that we've seen so far.
- Video:
- Possible fix for stack overflow when parsing video info
- Fix ability to connect to Harvid on systems lacking "localhost" (even though this is specified as part of IPv4 and IPv6). Examples: Chromebooks and some OS X systems.
- Fix video-metadata for Windows.
- Add in MXF file as a supported video format
- Allow to select video-files regardless of file ext.
- MIDI/Mackie Control Surfaces:
- Move learned midi binding reload after midi map load (fixes #6405)
- Add a midimap for using a WiiMote via midikb.
- Fixed generic MIDI program change event size to two bytes (fixes #6426)
- Fixed pitchbend use in toggle mode so that it switches on/off at half way (fixes #6424)
- Allow any one midi event to control only one thing.
- Make program change message turn toggle controls on/off, and set other controls to 1.
- Add support for 4 common types of encoders. Encoders are devices which use MIDI messages to send incremental rather than absolute position.
- Make Mackie Control MasterPosition match MIDI port number.
New in Ardour 4.1.0 (Jun 25, 2015)
- New Functionality:
- Input Gain Control
- Playback- or Capture-only device support for ALSA & Coreaudio
- Save As
- Windows assembler metering support.
- Click-free changes to processor order and meter position
- User Interface Changes:
- Waveform rendering
- Stationary playhead option
- Layering: later is higher
- hi-DPI support, part one
- hi-DPI support, part two
- Relative snap
- X-run counter in status bar
- Plugin parameter reset button
- Allow deletion of MIDI Program Changes using the Delete key
- Peak meters now have sample-accurate fall-off, no visual jitter
- Automation-lane log-scale parameter support
- New 0dBFS peak meter
- Tap tempo
- Remove time
- Fixes:
- No more x-runs & noise on session-open/close
- Fix stuck midi notes during save/auto-save
- Fix stuck midi notes if loop-range is present
- Various MCP improvements & tweaks
- Properly display JACK buffersize
- Fix importing old A2/A3 automation
- Fix Non Session Manager support
- VST plugins are now searched for using a case insensitive comparison of their filename extension
- Relax gain/fader LPF to 25Hz (was 10Hz)
- Fix monitor-section polarity invert
- Fix crash when switching backends.
New in Ardour 3.5.403 Beta (Oct 3, 2014)
- Additions & Changes:
- New MIDNAM file for the Korg Volca series
- Use 1-based numbering for MIDI controllers, rather than 0-based
- "Show All Automation" for MIDI tracks shows all named controllers
- Support channel NoteNameLists in MIDNAM files
- amend the list of known video file extensions
- New versions of jadeo and harvid for video work, providing better compatibility with video drivers on various Linux systems.
- Fix rounding error on rulers and BBT grid
New in Ardour 3.5.143 Beta (Jan 18, 2014)
- Functional Bug Fixes:
- fix continuous send of MIDI start/position/stop messages introduced by mistake in last release
- deliver MIDI clock position messages when stopped (e.g. when locating)
- Mackie Control support now saves & restores port connections
- fix feedback for Generic MIDI control support
- New Features:
- allow (optional) In/Disk monitoring button in Meter Bridge
- add K12/RMS meter type
- Tweaks:
- When editing a clock value in "Samples" mode, treat an empty edit as a no-op.
- Distinguish Save-as and Snapshot dialog windows
- Metering: reset time-axis peak when meter-point changes
- Fix for toolbar master-meter w/o master bus and/or detached toolbar
- Fix a crash during export when using 8 bit format
- Various minor fixups for the Audio/MIDI setup dialog
- Fix up a bunch of confusion regarding the size/capacity/allocation of audio & midi buffers
- Don't run MIDI clock "tick" if session is silent (e.g. due to a locate)
- Load VST plugins using version > 2.4 but print a warning for each one (they may simply not work)
- Recognize ppc64, ppc, s390x, s390 CPUs, default to 'none' instead of i686 (which tries to build with SSE and fails on non-x86 architectures).
- Distinguish flags influencing optimization (overridable) from those necessary for building (e.g. for using SSE).
- Fix a bug where memset was being used to fill a gain buffer with 1.0
- Compare region names case-sensitively
- Compare plugin/creator/category names UTF8-aware
- LV2 plugins: adjust LV2 ringbuffer size according to LV2:resize-port
- LV2 plugins: increase scratch buffer size to request port minimum size
- rsynth.lv2: fix octave, and fix note off+on within same synth cycle
- Midi Clock: fix wrong calculation of loop error, and fix bandwidth to 2/60 for best results
- Mackie Control: fix various subtle problems when changing devices
New in Ardour 3.0 Beta 5 (Jul 25, 2012)
- NEW FUNCTIONALITY/CHANGES:
- Visualization of automation while recording it has returned (this was removed during the development of Ardour3 as we merged some improvements in data handling from Ardour2/Mixbus). Several other less notable changes to the way automation data is handled add up to a vastly improved system, with more to come. One important missing piece right now: undo/redo for automation capture does not work.
- Handle AudioUnit plugin GUIs that want to resize themselves
- Working handling of LV2 plugin presets
- Touch automation now works for AudioUnit plugins, at least those whose GUIs do the right thing
- Provide an easier way to add mixed (audio+MIDI) tracks to a session, to facilitate the use of plugins like Reaktor which accept both audio & MIDI data.
- Name insert and send ports as "return" and "send" rather than "in" and "out". It is possible that this might break some connections in some existing sessions.
- Allow alt-drag on stereo panner to move just one side of the stereo field. this wiggles a bit, possibly because of rounding, and that probably needs to be addressed
- Send automation now works
- Smooth 0.5 second fade out during quit, plus MIDI panic to turn everything off
- MIDI FIXES:
- Fix issues with MIDI note selection when entering and leaving leaving internal ("note") edit mode, starting rubber-band note selection drags, and when changing region selections.
- Fix crash when quitting with MIDI notes selected
- Add "v" as a new MIDI editing key for velocity, add a velocity editing dialog, and allow all selected MIDI notes to have their velocity set to the same adjusted value
- Remove extra .mid suffix added to cloned MIDI region names
- Properly handle zero-length MIDI files during import
- Improve vertical positioning of MIDI notes during drags
- Disallow import-without-copy for MIDI files
- Prevent exit from note edit mode on double-click with a modifier held down - prevents creation of malformed notes
- Do not mark imported MIDI files as un-writable - all MIDI files are subject to rewriting at any time
- Rename MIDI "Fork" operation to "Unlink from other copies"
- Make a few more MIDI track menu options apply to the current selection
- Remove believed-unnecessary and broken MIDI thru option
- Extend a previous region if we click in a MIDI automation lane where there is no region
- GENERIC MIDI CONTROL SURFACE SUPPORT:
- Fix generic MIDI bindings that use note on/off commands
- Add BCF2000 device info file for Mackie Control
- Alternate Korg nanoCONTROL MIDI binding map
- New Korg nanoControl2 MIDI binding map
- Allows definitions in a binding map that refer to elements that have not yet been (and might never be) created in a session. When those elements are created (e.g a send, or a plugin) the binding will start to work.
- Add a set-bank function to MIDI binding map support
- Add optional threshold for catch-up with non motorised controls in generic MIDI surfaces. This is very useful when working with devices that vary in the "gaps" they may generate when sending a continuous fader motion (i.e. sending non-contiguous controller values). The default value, for example, does NOT work well with a Peavey PC1600X controller, but when tweaked, the faders work very well.
- bindings to MIDI note on/off messages that involve non-toggle controls (e.g. transport) now do something sensible.
- bindings to transport controls for "goto start", "goto end" and "play selection" now work)
- MACKIE CONTROL SUPPORT:
- Quite a lot of work was done to polish up the revised Mackie Control support that surfaced in Beta4. The code has now been tested on the SSL Nucleus, Mackie Control and Mackie Control Pro, Steinberg CMC and Behringer BC* devices, and all work well modulo issues with the ALSA/JACK MIDI bridge. Specific details that were addressed included:
- metering now works on MC Pro
- fix V-Pot displays for Mackie Control
- fix 100% CPU use when using Mackie Control other than SSL Nucleus
- timecode display works
- MIDNAM, Plugin preset & Program Changes:
- Some major reworking was done to integrate the handling of patch/instrument data, regardless of whether a MIDI track is being used to drive external synthesizers or plugin instruments. This is not complete, and may never be because the two concepts do not really fully align (plugin presets are NOT program changes). As part of that work, some other details of handling MIDNAM files (used to define programs for external synthesizers) were addressed:
- fix search path for MIDNAM files
- add MIDNAM data into patch change dialogs
- fix lookup of MIDNAM patch data
- save MIDNAM settings for each track
- Stop s with unresolved s to stop errors on startup
- add a General MIDI MIDNAM file
- GUI BEHAVIOUR:
- Add option to not use gradients when rendering waveforms
- Outline fade in/out handles in black
- Provide some numerical data during automation trim (range) drags
- Shift-click on shuttle controller in wheel mode resets it to 1.0 (100%)
- Move binding for duplicate-region to secondary-d rather than d, use d for draw notes mouse mode
- Introduce the idea of a "default transport speed", used whenever Session::start_transport() is called. Only the shuttle controller alters it, and even that only alters it in wheel mode, which means that stopping the transport does not rever the default speed back to zero. To get back to zero either switch the shuttle controller back to sprung mode, or change the speed back to zero
- Keep latency dialog for plugins above the plugin GUI
- Add a menu option and key press (F) in port matrices to flip the selected row and columns in the matrix.
- Middle-click on a location clock still works even when the location/clock is locked
- Filter the existing session chooser to .ardour files, as with the open session chooser.
- Hide patch changes if they are too wide for the region at a given zoom level
- Move delta-to-edit-point options to the main clock context menus
- Make faders visually desensitised when their tracks are in automation-play.
- Properly manage the splash screen, particularly on OS X
- Add primary-modifier click on monitor knobs to go to -inf dB
- Try to provide some rationality for region gain line visibility (and automation line visibility in general
- Paste to the track under the mouse if we are using the mouse as the edit point, otherwise use selected tracks
- Fix for plugin windows reappearing at (0,0) after ardour becomes the active app again on OS X
- Remove beta page from startup wizard
- In startup wizard, use dbl-click to activate "what would you like to do?" radio buttons, rather than click
- Fix crash on zooming out too far
- Grey-out patch changes on inactive channels rather than not plotting them at all
- Sensitize region-related actions even in non-object mode
- Provide dialogs to edit pan values numerically, at least for mono and stereo panners.
- Simplify management of waveform visibility / shape / scale
- Add option to disable autoscroll of editor
- Fix for track height step losing 'grip' on the track being resized
- Add translucent "shade" to playhead cursor
- Thicken automation lines (makes dragging them easier, and looks better too)
- Make more or less all left-hand-side treeviews use the same style in both the editor and mixer windows
- Handle failure to start audioengine correctly, rather than get stuck in an endless dialog.
- Force I/O selector windows to stay-on-top (experimental)
- Fix display of region names that don't fit inside a region
- When sounding notes on selection / note movements, play the note for as long as the mouse button is held dow
- Darken light theme treeview text
- Add option to add new range marker from the context menu without needing the keyboard
- Slightly narrower faders in the editor track controls area
- BUG FIXES:
- Opaque regions correctly overwrite anything in the mix buffer
- Fix crash when sum of fade in + fade out is longer than the region
- fix (very old) bug when evaluating automation curves at a position before the first point on the curve.
- Gracefully handle LV2 plugins without a GUI
- Always create short xfades when adding a region after a capture pass
- Fix up various loose ends associated with the conversion to the "new xfade model"
- Don't alter session search path when auditioning audio files
- Avoid splitting unselected regions on the same track as a selected region
- Make the "No selection = all tracks" button work
- Improve display of timestretching in stacked layers mode
- prevent x-axis movement of the end points of region gain lines
- Re-implement URIMap to tolerate broken plugins that use the wrong context to map MIDI event types
- Fix clear-selection behaviour
- Don't reset region fades to default after a playlist edit unless the fades used to be part of an xfade and now no longer are
- Fix a variety of issues with mouse cursors
- Slightly unpleasant hack to stop control points being unselected when you ctrl-drag a selected point in order to do a push drag.
- Correct rounding issues when converting between audio frame and unit/pixel values
- Handle discontiguous control point selections properly when dragging.
- Allow movement of several vertically-colinear points at the same time.
- Fix incorrect automation point drags when a drag is started with push held and finished without it.
- Use the same logic to decide on step size when scroll-wheeling faders in the mixer and knobs in the monitor section
- Fix subtraction math for ranges used when computing what data to read from regions/playlists
- Fix uninitialised variable causing garbage output from panners in some cases.
- When we rename a track, only rename its playlist if it has never contained any regions
- Prevent latency measurement output buffer being silenced by cycle_end, to fix port insert latency measurement
- Claim button release on patch change events so that editing a patch change does not also open the region editor for any selected regions.
- Fix non-updated ordinary fade-outs during trim drags
- Fix crash when creating a new session after session close
- Make automation state management full locale-independent (so sessions can be moved between locales without messing up automation data)
- Correctly handle plugins with variable input AND output when they are the first processor in a track/bus
- Don't set TimeFXRequest done to true too early, fixes crashes after time stretching
- Somewhat primitive implementation of allowing the edit note dialog to handle multiple notes
- Try to correctly manage follow-playhead behaviour before and after playhead drags
- Make crossfade edge drags undoable.
- Make sure that regions created during AsTrack and AsTapeTrack imports are added to the master region list, otherwise if they are subsequently deleted they will be lost. This causes the undo record to go wrong as it references a non-existant region.
- Commit one reversible command for the whole of an import, rather than one per region; makes MIDI imports into multiple tracks undoable in one step
- Fix off-by-one in computation of crossfade lengths.
- Set up layering correctly on compound playlists so that the regions on the compound list are arranged the same as on the original.
- Fix incorrect display of automation lines after points are removed.
- Don't change playlists of frozen tracks when changing the playlist of a route group
- Patch from colinf to put the playlist / take name in the playlist button tooltip
- Make "View >> Toolbar When Maximized" act immediately, i.e., even when already maximized changing this toggle changes whenever toolbar is shown or not;
- Renames "Toolbar When Maximized" to "Show Toolbar" as it acts whenever editor has maximized space or not.
- Escape angled brackets in playlist names for tooltips.
- Handle failure of statfs to return available disc space on Samba shares mounted via GVFS
- Detect filesystems mounted read-only when determining whether a session is writable
- Make fit contents / show full range work for all selected tracks
- Fit note range on adding regions to tracks during import
- Colour lower stacked regions with a lighter colour and make it configurable
- Fix some issues with toggling mixer-on-top status
- Use preview filename rather than the first-alphabetically-sorted filename for preview in the import dialogue
- Fix broken visibility and size management of piano roll keyboard + scroomer
- Fix several crashes during shutdown
- Never try to remove state from a read-only session
- Fix crash associated with track freezing
- Return silence from read_from_sources() if we try to read a channel that our source does not have (if replicate-missing-region-channels is turned off
- fix restore of mute control state when loading session
- Fix failure to load A2 sessions with a ControlOut.
- Make switching between input+disk monitoring work "right" for MIDI track
- Fix a bug that led to messages about notes already being on at program start because of a double seek with no read in between
- Slighty brighten bar lines and slighty dim beat lines for easier visual distinction
- Fix logic for setting mixer strip name button widths
- Change option name to clarify that get_default_narrow_ms is applied to the mixer only
- Store the topologically sorted order of execution so that even the single DSP processor case uses its
- Adds an 'empty' preset to the preset drop-down list, so that plugins can be set back to the 'no preset' state rather than being stuck in the state of 'preset loaded and modified
- Make sure we always copy Freesound imported files as well as MIDI ones
- Clarify the meaning of the show-region-gain-envelopes option.
- Tweak naming of various buttons and labels in the export dialog
- Unify clamping of frames-per-unit values during zoom
- Declick before the end of seamless loops, not after the end, so that loops are rendered accurately
- Fixing issues with opening a browser for web-access
- Fix reset of transport speed when seamless looping
- Prevent the nastiness that occurs when the RHS editor list is dragged so that the pane handle "vanishes" into the tabs
- Don't swallow left/right scroll events in a midi region view when in internal edit mode
- Don't try to backup sessions from older versions of ardour that are also read-only
- In export format dialog, show preview of generated part of description
- Revert to using SSE mix-buffers-with-gain rather than simple one.
- Fix stem export. The capturing processor of routes was never removed, and was restored inactive, which made stem export fail.
- Change logic for compiling export format descriptions from incomplete formats
- Increase the export "chunk size" to speed it up over 10% at least in some situations
- Remove some excess commas from the export format description
- Drastic rethink of the relationship between remote control ID and route order keys
- Don't specify real-time priority when starting JACK
- Be more graceful if there is an undo record which references a non-existant object; this shouldn't happen, of course, but there was a bug in some early betas which made it occur
- Allow new idle visual changer calls to be requested while the current changer is executing (fixes auto-return even when zoomed in)
- Fix some oddities with playhead movement when locating during roll
- fix rec-enable toggle with the Korg nanoKONTROL
- Set number of process thread buffers based on run-time-discovered num-cpus
- Fix missing lock causing erroneous disk space reports when dragging audio clocks.
- Don't start a clock drag if we drag to the right of the numbers.
- Fix crash on trying to snap to markers when there aren't any
- Don't rename playlists on rename track if the track has >1 playlist
- Do not deactivate the meter in a frozen track
- Fix Jack transport master after session load.
- Report correct time instead of old time when locating as Jack transport master.
- Set fader and plugin parameter automation curve default values
- Don't spin on Session::timecode_transmission_suspended() if disconnected from JACK because it will never be re-enable
- Use correct event struct when handling key events in patch changes
- Flip semantics for next/prev bank so that the direction in numerical terms matches next/prev patch (i.e. up arrow goes to higher numbers)
- BUILD & CODING FIXES:
- update to Suil 0.6.4 for support of plugins with X11 and Qt GUIs
- change build system to support complation with CLANG (via setting the CC and CXX environment variables)
- remove more than 500 unnecessary #included header files, thus speeding up compilation a bit
- use chrpath to reset RPATH within bundled libraries so that the runtime linker will not go looking in places set by parts of the GTK build stack
- adjust bundling/packaging to make SUIL (and thus several LV2 GUIs) work
- fix resample-session.pl to work even if there is no automation directory
- Use std::string instead of PBD::sys::path
- use various g_**** functions rather than versions from PBD::sys namespace
- fix osx build script when the path to the plugin folder contains spaces
- OS X version can now successfully find an existing running instance of JACK
- fix substitution and install of session templates
- define CHARSETALIASDIR (again) to stop various bits of the GNU stack from loading a charset.alias file that we did not provide
- converge on 3 different search paths (ARDOUR_CONFIG_PATH, for configuration files; ARDOUR_DLL_PATH, for included shared libraries; ARDOUR_DATA_PATH, for other included data files), all of which can be controlled from the environment
- Use a map of region names to speed up RegionFactory::new_region_name, which was a performance bottleneck
- TRANSLATIONS:
- Updated Russian and Spanish translations.
New in Ardour 3.0 Beta 4a (Jul 6, 2012)
- Significant New Functionality:
- New Crossfade Model:
- In this beta release of Ardour3, we have switched to a new model for Crossfades that is derived from work done by Ben Loftis of Harrison Consoles for Mixbus. The older model, which was inherited from Ardour2, was quite complex at the code level and removing it makes other things simpler too. The two models are very different;
- However:
- In the old model, a crossfade was an independent object that described the gain relationship between the start of one region and the end of another.
- In the new model, crossfading simply uses the existing fade in (or out) curve of a region, and applies a complementary fade out (or in) to any material "below" the region. Put differently, in the new model crossfading does not happen between two specific regions, but is instead the gain management applied to manage the start (or end) of a region and anything "below" it.
- The new implementation reduces the number of standard fade shapes to just 5: Linear (for crossfading strongly correlated audio), Constant Power (for general purpose crossfades), Fast, Slow and Symmetric (the last 3 all have a different feel, but are somewhat "musical").
- It is now possible to drag the end of an xfade that isn't defined by the start (or end) of a region, and sensible things will happen. More work is planned for the future to allow full, easy and fast control of crossfades. The old crossfade editor is no longer accessible, and will be replaced in the future by a simpler but more powerful tool.
- If you have an existing Ardour 3 session that uses crossfades for specific effects, you should make a copy of the entire session folder before using it with this release.
- Reimplementation of support for Mackie Control Protocol devices:
- Ardour2 and Ardour3 have had existing support for devices that use something like Mackie Control Protocol such as the Mackie Control Pro, the Logic Control and the BCF2000. Unfortunately, this support was somewhat buggy and had a number of issues. As a result of unexpected access to the relatively new Solid State Logic Nucleus control surface, I decided to invest the time and effort to revamp the support for devices like this. In the end the code has been almost entirely reimplemented. So far we have only really tested with the Nucleus and the Steinberg CMC series, but before 3.0 is released we plan to ensure complete out of the box functionality with the Mackie Control Pro and Behringer BCF2000 as well.
- Well-tested and operational features:
- Support for both Mackie and Logic variants of the control protocol
- Full access to gain/mute/solo/pan, bank-by-channel, bank-by-track, metering
- Full fader and LED feedback from Ardour
- GUI dialog to bind any surface button to any Ardour function
- Shuttle/Zoom with the jog wheel
- Strip locking
- Per-device info files
- Profiles allow task-specific button bindings for different workflows
- Specifically for the Nucleus, Ardour now supports ipMIDI internally which provides an extremely flexible, lightweight and reliable data path to/from the surface.
- LV2 Plugin API Support:
- Ardour now uses the released versions of the lv2core, serd, sord, sratom, lilv and suil libraries, and no longer requires pre-release versions of these libraries. It will no longer build against old versions of these libraries and no longer has any support for the slv2 library that was replaced by lilv.
- Many fixes for support of different types of LV2 GUIs (plugin editors/interfaces)
- Support for the following extensions:
- worker thread, including sample-accurate synchronous execution during export
- event MIDI in/out
- atom MIDI in/out
- instance-access, data-access
- state, including full non-destructive file saving, and saving of all atom types (via lilv)
- uri-map, urid
- ui, with support for Gtk/Qt/X11 UIs (via suil) and external UIs
- ui control "touch"
- full round-trip communication between ui and plugin for messages (e.g. atoms)
- display plugin and port documentation in UI as tooltips
- presets (loading only)
- latency
- support for ports specially designated for BPM and freeWheeling
- Other:
- support a grid of beats/64 and beats/128
- Freezing tracks is now more generally possible, but will only operate on the processing in a track/bus as far as the the first send/return/insert or a plugin with a different I/O configuration than the input of the track/bus.
- Copying of sends is now better behaved, including retaining the same connections as the original (with new names, obviously)
- Add user metadata. User metadata is edited from the same dialog and read/writable using the same mechanism as session metadata, but it is stored in the ardour.rc file instead of with the session. Importing metadata from another session does not change user metadata.
- Add 44 MIDNAM files for a variety of external hardware synthesizers, thus providing named patch/program management for this hardware
- MIDI region export
- GUI Improvements:
- Remove magic number voodoo when saving zoom focus/snap settings to instant.xml etc. (this has a minor breaking-behaviour for existing sessions)
- Keep track of grid type/settings in and out of note edit mode and switch back and forth, thus allowing independent grids while working at the note or region level
- Make region gain line visibility global, not per-region
- Display fader and send gain automation in dB using a logarithmic fader.
- Add base MIDI map for the Behringer BCF2000 in Mackie emulation mode.
- If there is one invert button for many channels, always use a menu; in this case, also partially light the invert button if only a subset of channels are inverted
- Show the number of channels in brackets when there is a single invert button for multiple channels
- Make route group dialog resizable
- Make ArdourPrompter entries resize when the window is resized, rather than the label
- Mark rec enable controls as toggling, thus ensuring proper behavior with various controllers
- Always show loop markers when looping is initiated
- Add motorised attribute to DeviceInfo for generic MIDI maps so that we can specify if a surface is motorised, and as such will keep its phyiscal controls in sync with Ardour's controllables at all times. If this is not the case, we enable the code to avoid jumps when controls and controllables are out of sync. Mark the BCF2000 as motorised
- Expand just entry fields when the metadata dialog is expanded and fix label assignments
- Tweaks to improve the Freesound browsing/import dialog
- Allow the number of recent sessions to be configured
- Put a tooltip in the recent session display.
- Remove submenu-only items from the keybindings dialog
- Move text in rulers up by a few pixels for MUCH better appearance
- Make the close button in the config info dialog work.
- Handle default session dir a little better
- Force the creation of a new session on first run of Ardour 3
- Visual state management now uses ctrl-Fn (Fn is a function key such as F1) to save, Fn to goto
- Save and restore nudge clock value
- Reduce the width of the line separating tracks in the editor summary line (by-product: slightly more space appears to be there between the colored blocks representing regions too
- Make toggle MIDIControllables with program changes only respond to the appropriate program change
- Make MIDI Patch Manager search in $user_config_dir/patchfiles for midnam files as well as the per-session equivalent
- Add tooltips to plugin controls in the processor box
- Relabel the "precise" button does in the timefx dialog to make it clear what it does
- Don't leave internal edit mode when clicking on an automation region view
- Make stereo panners move right with the mouse
- Reshow time selection when zooming in object-range mode
- Make automation thinning factor controllable at run time
- Fix some packing issues in the monitor section when using high-channel-count master/monitor busses (eg. with ambisonics)
- Force small screen profile if ARDOUR_NARROW_SCREEN is set in the environment
- Add Primary-Shift-P as shortcut for preferences dialog
- Support adding plugins via keyboard (Enter).
- Remove seemingly not-that-useful menu item, since edit mode can be changed from the drop-down in the toolbar.
- Remove a couple of uses of the word Route in the UI.
- Make it possible to select very short regions
- Use Later / Earlier in descriptions of nudging and some playhead movements, instead of Forward / Backward
- Display hardware IO individually in the port matrices unless we are in _show_only_bundles mode.
- Embolden the labels of connection matrix tabs when they have connections
- Reorder editor route list columns to put visible and active first
- Internal Improvements:
- The installer will now create a link to the program in /usr/local/bin to allow starting from the command line.
- If the installer or uninstaller is not running as root, they will now attempt to use both sudo and su to get root access. This means double click install now works on systems that don't have sudo installed or configured.
- Fix Ardour/VST build
- Drop boost::signals2 and replace with a home-grown solution which continues to rely on boost::function and boost::bind for the hard stuff.
- Fix up a substantial mess with the operation of toggle-zoom and related actions, partially caused by XMLNode semantics
- New design for processor drag-n-drop
- Tweak audio track importer to use the modified xml++ API for XPATH searching
- Some deep changes to xml++ in which we retain a C-level xmlDocPtr as a member of an XMLTree objects. this allows us to do repeated XPATH searches (as in the midnam parser of libmidi++) without constantly rewriting an entire tree into memory to recreate a new xmlDocPtr with which we can search.
- A lot of tweaking and fixing for the MIDNAM parsing code so that it correctly handles all 44 sample files from digicake.com/midnams.
- Draw all automation points, rather than trying to use a heuristic to show some at any given zoom level.
- add "centrally-parsed" property to MIDI::Port so that we can avoid the MidiUI loop from handling input for every MIDI port that Ardour creates
- various fixes based on feedback from Coverity
- A few tweaks to make Ardour build in GCC -std=c++0x mode
- A few tweaks to make Ardour build with GCC 4.7
- Use a list of ControlPoints to hold the automation selection, rather than a time range. Simplifies the code a fair bit simpler, and should fix some unexpected behaviours, especially when cutting automation points.
- Use a read-write mutex for playlists and remove the single bit of design that used to require a recursive mutex.
- Clarify behaviour of Region::read (overwrites its buffer) wrt Region::read_at (mixes into its buffer). Fixes various Rhythm Ferret bugs.
- Remove virtual inheritance of sigc::trackable by Receiver and AbstractUI, done by changing Gtkmm2ext::UI to use composition (HAS-A) rather than inheritance (IS-A) for Receiver
- Use correct synchronization when starting up a BaseUI event loop thread so that tests that start/stop quickly do not encounter a race condition
- Add --generic flag to wscript to facilitate 32 bit builds on 64 bit OS X
- Stop using old GNU config.guess script and use python's builtin os.uname() values
- Fix crashes on certain processors by correctly using posix_memalign() in general, and specifically in connection with assembler code that saves the FPU flag state.
- Major rationalization of use of search paths. ardour now has just 4 functions used to define how external resources are located: ardour_config_search_path() (for system or user specific configuration data), ardour_data_search_path() (for machine, user and system independent data), ardour_dll_directory() (base directory where shared libraries are found) and user_config_directory(). These are now used throughout the code. the config, data and dll paths/directories can be overridden by environment variables. the user config dir is added as the first element of the first two search paths, and use selectively when searching for a few other things.
- Bugs Squashed:
- Slightly tweaked patch from colinf to avoid crashes on out-of-range LADSPA port indices
- Fix crash on stem export of 4-channel tracks
- Prevent duplication of search path elements when symlinks are involved
- allow shortcut/accel for set-mouse-mode-draw to work
- Fix auto-connect of bus outputs
- Fixes some misplaced BBT-time based pastes.
- Fix up naming of Sends/Returns when copying them
- Fix crash when display MIDI region context menu
- Fix crash when setting an LV2 preset that refers to ports via incorrect names
- Use an AutoSpin rather than a combo box for plugin parameters marked up as scalePoint with fewer labels than there are possible values for the parameter
- Prevent a deadlock when removing an aux send
- Fix bug in decoding URL's
- Fix reads off the end of the data array during transient analysis
- Fix reference to MIDI track after it has been deleted
- Fix double-delete of peakfile descriptor
- Fix failed assertion with plugins with only an audio output are inserted on a MIDI track
- Don't abort if mis-matched processors are found; a vaguely satisfactory workaround for crashes when loading sessions with missing plugins.
- Don't crash when hovering over a MIDI region
- Possibly fix loss of MIDI notes when changing existing tempo marks
- Fix freeze operation crashes by obtaining process buffers in freeze thread (and then dropping them) rather than just setting up the per-thread object that stores them
- Fix linear interpolator to avoid error accumulation.
- Get the _note_mode set up correctly in a MidiDiskstream before the initial buffer fill, so that percussive mode tracks play properly
- Fix crash during region spectral analysis
- Fix the focussing of newly-created marker name entries when Config->get_name_new_markers() is true.
- Stop crash if an error message is generated before the style RC file is loaded
- Don't load irrelevant symlinks when trying to discover control protocol shared objects
- Fix unnecessary backups of session files.
- Imported sources should be marked as non-writable and non-removable, always
- When resetting the import dialog based on selceted track counts, change the file chooser filter to match a clear selection of a a particular track type
- Make solo lock/safe button only respond to mouse button1
- Translations:
- German update from Edgar Aichinger
New in Ardour 3.0 Beta 3 (Feb 20, 2012)
- Significant New Functionality:
- Click/metronome is now latency compensated
- Monitor Section is now an optional feature that can be added/removed to/from a session as needed.
- Restore ability to create TOC and CUE files during export, and improve the formatting of these files
- Enter and exit node edit mode with dbl-click in any MIDI region (also leave with a single click on anything other than a MIDI region or note)
- Make plugin controls displayable in the mixer strip
- Add a way to create a new MIDI track with an instrument pre-selected
- Restore independent gain control over click/metronome
- Now-functional MIDI list editor: delete notes; full keyboard and scroll editing; keyboard navigation; Primary-z and Primary-r undo/redo, as expected; much more to be done in the future (including note insertion)
- GUI Improvements:
- Smart mode (combined object+range mode) now improved in many ways large and small
- Return of the splash screen
- More and improved tooltips
- Reorganize structure of the Regions and region context menus
- Make contents of region properties dialogue expand with the window
- Cleanups for the Freesound browser (add stop, remove URI, clear barberpole)
- New mouse mode (Draw Notes) rather than overloading range mode
- Double click on send "box" toggles the display of its controls in its parent mixer strip
- Add option to use plugin GUIs or Ardour generic ones.
- "aux-" dropped from the name of aux sends
- Add warnings for overwriting marker files
- Use the same criteron to sensitize the choose-top-region menu item as to decide whether to open it or not, to prevent a sensitive menu item that does nothing.
- Tidy up RegionLayeringOrderEditor a bit, including making it respect edit groups.
- Don't offer to save master bus as a route template
- Show proper progress information for export while normalizing
- Some improvements to the add track/bus dialog to make it more obvious how to add MIDI tracks
- Region list now accurately tracks regions' fade in/out status and length
- Don't autoscroll right if we are moving left, and vice versa;
- Fix issue with export channel splitting getting stuck in the filename
- Show an example filename in the main export dialog
- Use custom i-beam cursor for range mode
- Fix position of viewport after a playhead drag outside the viewport (when following the playhead).
- Improve usage of expanded window space in the export dialog + put the "advanced" stuff in a Gtk::VPaned
- Fix the width of generic plugin editors
- Don't bother opening a time FX dialog if we are just time stretching MIDI regions
- Update summary on switching playlists
- Button joiner: used to surround the play-range & roll buttons, and also object and range mouse mode buttons; clicking on it toggles special modes ("always play range" and "smart mode" respectively).
- Clicking on track rec-enable button while step-editing now exits step-editing mode.
- Add delta-time option to MIDI tracer window. Note that its not incredibly accurate or useful right now, because timestamps come from the system clock and are taken when the data is read/written to the port buffer, not its actual timestamp within the buffer
- New display of "implicitly on" buttons (rather than using an alternate color, we draw the "actively on" color as a border around the button).
- Internal Improvements:
- Aux sends and regular sends are now numbered independently
- Various optimizations for the core processing loop (reduces apparent DSP load, especially with small sessions)
- For now, only use the multi-threaded process code if we are using >1 processor for DSP; this involves making the DSP use setting only take effect on a restart of Ardour.
- Increase size of click pool to cover longer latency settings
- Make adding tracks/busses from templates just like adding them at the start of a session, in that IO connedon't offer to save master bus as a route templatections are prevented until they are all added
- Use new Lilv state API to save LV2 plugin state (requires latest lilv version)
- Store Region export state in instant.xml
- Add aux sends at the position that the menu was opened, rather than always pre-fader
- Make crossfade active state and length changes undo-able.
- Use musical_time_equal() test for equality when copying notes, not strict floating point equality.
- Make crossfade convert-to-full and activate/deactivate work across edit groups
- Stop sending MMC/MTC while exporting or freewheeling for any other reason.
- Bugs Squashed:
- Fixed crashing bug caused by Apple's implementation of getmntinfo()
- Fix a variety of bugs of varying severity related to the tempo map changes done for 3.0 beta2
- Catch exception thrown by SMF code when it cannot write to a file
- Fix export threading timeouts when disk operations take long. Might fix other timeout issues also.
- Fix failure to find route templates
- Clear clicks when auto-returning or looping
- Make time stretch respect edit group
- Make plugins-stop-with-transport work
- Explicitly cancelling solo status when a route's inputs drop to zero
- Rework design of midi clock ticker to avoid expensive generalization that has turned out to have no particular use, and fix bug that caused incorrect ticks to be sent (or attempted) as the transport starts up.
- Fix timefx on multiple regions, even regions of mixed type
- Tape track files need to be created when opened, not when written to
- Fix failure to summon the disk butler thread when a track that needs it is followed by a track that does not
- Do not crash if an LV2 plugin calls the UI write callback with a port number that ardour has decided is not an automatable parameter
- Fix for crash-by-assert just after a MIDI diskstream overwrite (e.g. just after an edit, while playback is active)
- Fix bug in MidiClock that sent MIDI Clock messages with negative offsets after a loop point
New in Ardour 3.0 Beta 1 (Nov 28, 2011)
- This is the first version of Ardour 3 that has support for OS X (Intel only for now, sorry PPC users), where you will find fully functional AudioUnit instrument support among all the other goodies that Ardour 3 brings.
- The (very long) list below documents the other many changes, including support for Linux native VSTs, an initial new version of Freesound browsing, some shinier (and perhaps out of place) new buttons, and a metric ton of bug fixes and improvements.
- It corrects several packaging errors in beta1, and by coincidence contains a couple of new features and bug fixes.
- If you downloaded beta1, please upgrade to this version.
New in Ardour 2.8.12 (Oct 12, 2011)
- New Features or Behaviour and workflow improvements:
- OS X Lion Support
- Linux binary packages (for all versions of Linux on x86 or x86_64 processors)
- Correctly align newly recorded material on the timeline
- OS X: double-click on a session file opens Ardour
- reinstate "merge files" in import dialog so that 2 mono files can be imported as a stereo track
- Forces new tempo and meter markers to start a new bar on the first beat
- Changes to automation data recording
- No longer decide automation control point visibility based on zoom level
- Remove unnecessary control points in automation data as it is recorded
- Allow timecode to skip forwards or backwards or even loop while recording automation (data is only recorded during forward playback)
- Add a second Delete action, so both Backspace and Delete can be bound to delete. this is really useful on macbooks which have a backspace but no delete key. to turn on this behavior, users will have to add the new editor-alternate-delete action to theri bindings, OR go to Preferences->Mouse/Key and re-load one of the default bindings files
- New route groups are turned "on" at creation
- F4 is bound to the real separate action, not the Separate sub-menu (ergnomic bindings only)
- Remove some rhythm ferret options that are not implemented in A2
- Change order of range menu so more common operations are nearer the top
- Crash Fixes:
- Fix crash when two overlapped regions are selected
- Fixes crashes when playhead is moved if fader automation is on the 'write' setting
- Symptom-fix for an issue with bogus crossfades. Avoids crashes though it doesn't fix the underlying problem.
- Bug Fixes:
- Fix misbehaviour when freewheeling due to Ardour's own export
- Change the way we use "physical screen height" to better account for multi-monitor setups
- Make sequence-files option for import use file timecode, make all import/embed ops use per-file TC if timecode was requested, rather than just the first file's TC
- Fix occasional deafening noise at region cut points
- Fix management of fade in/out active management
- Restore text to the editor canvas on big-endian machines (OS X PPC)
- Don't try to call "render" on AU plugins with no input elements
- Some Mackie-emulation systems (e.g. euphonix) send zero for the tick count when the jog wheel is moved, so accomodate this by pretending that they reported 1 tick
- Save/restore environment as needed when forking external apps like JACK
- Fix possible drift out of sync of tracks during varispeed
- Don't adjust session end location when any region end is moved.
- LV2 UI parameter now handled by the GUI thread, not just the same thread that the update happened
- Prevent ardour from ever, EVER, EVAH removing an existing source file
- Make sure declicking fades reach their target
- Fix Insert Region From List and Fill Range with Selected Region
- Add support for AudioUnit parameter listening
- Make timefx thread sleep for a bit after its done, so that the GUI can process its requests before it dies and takes it request buffer with it
- Fix old issue where copy-pasting a range selection from region(s), each region would inherit the parents full fade-in or -out even when the region excerpt didn't include the fade
- Fixes for gcc 4.6
- Do not try to silence port buffers after a reconnect, since this violates old JACK policy and new JACK implementation
- Fix reallocation of silent, passthru and send buffers, specifically after a reconnect to JACK
- Fix cut-n-paste typo that caused Session::send_buffers to be the wrong size
- Commit patch from colinf to just err, rather than abort, if ::truncate_start() is called on an empty automation list
- Fixed bug where embedded sources did not correctly obey the BWF time stamp and would import at the timestamp of the first file
- When importing sources that are using sample rate conversion, the BWF start time has to be converted also
- Fix bug that prevented fade-ins from being restored in an inactive state
- Remove almost all use of Glib::ustring to avoid issues with non-Latin characters in file names on some versions of OS X
- Do not attempt to lookup sndfile constants/enums using a string, because this breaks when using anything but english
- Allow correct restoration of Lock Edit mode
- Translations:
- New Basque translation from Maider Likona and friends
New in Ardour 2.8.2 (Jul 22, 2009)
- Contains a fix for a another critical bug on OS X that causes ardour to crash when deleting plugins with Carbon-based user interfaces.
- There are also two other small fixes: logarithmic plugin parameters can now be modified sensibly, and when importing files using the "copy files to session" option, an existing BWF timestamp is no longer lost.
New in Ardour 2.8 (Apr 1, 2009)
- Correct handling of Shift- shortcuts on OS X.
- Fix confusion with Ctrl/Cmd/Option on OS X.
- Cmd-, now shows Preferences window on OS X.
- Removing a track/bus that was visible in the editor mixer strip causes the editor mixer strip to move to the next track/bus.
- Default click output is dual mono (2 outs), not mono (1 out).
- Fix ordering of editor & mixer displays when order in the other window is changed and sync-editor-mixer-order is enabled.
- If we attempt to move beyond the current limit of the horizontal scrollbar, change its upper limit so that we keep scrolling (fixes a bug with playhead tracking beyond the current session end).
- Standardize sizing of ComboBoxSelectors throughout the GUI.
- Fix crash when renaming a track after deleting a plugin that had a visible GUI/editor window.
- Make "consolidate range" and "bounce range to region list" not apply processing to the original audio.
- Added variants of "consolidate range" and "bounce range" which do apply processing.
- Fix potential for clipping when use Transpose or TimeFX.
- Standardize some menu actions across CD and loop/punch rulers. also allow right-click drag to create ranges, which may be more discoverable than ctrl-click drag because the other rulers already use right-click for creating markers.
- "Mute region" shortcut operates on all selected regions.
- Fixes for crossfade clicks.
- Fixes for gcc 4.4.
- Fix crash when sending MIDI feedback with MTC enabled.
- Allow dragging of automation lines.
- Preserve sufficient significant digits when saving automation events to disk.
- Quantize shuttle speed changes to whole semitones when shuttle in semitone mode.
- Use region sync points correctly for grid and playhead motion.
- Fix subtle bug when playing plugin automation that could sometimes lead to crashes and memory corruption.
- Use Vamp 2.0 and Rubberband 1.3 (includes an important fix for a potential audible issue when stretching).
- Fix freeze progress bar display.
- Fix potential crash caused by multithreaded execution of plugins while "freezing" a track.
- Make name-click to toggle plugin active state show up via the bypass button state in the GUI.
- be willing to load some additional types of AU plugins, including AUNetSend and AUNetReceive.
- Context menu-driven operations on ruler bars now cause things to be added in the right place (e.g. new markers).
- Fix a crash that occurred while dragging a region after a split.
- Do not cache JACK port buffer addresses, to permit operation with experimental versions of Jack2.
New in Ardour 2.7 Build 4225 (Nov 21, 2008)
- Overall dramatic improvements in OS X GUI performance
- New action to rotate editor/mixer window stacking
- New action to cycle through mouse modes
- Plugin windows can now have keyboard focus locked to them
- Add missing extensions to exported files based on selected file type
- Loop/Range ruler now visible by default
- Default crossfade is now -3dB cut
- Crossfade presets changed to include -6dB cut and two S-curves (icons sadly not changed yet)
- New support for Wiimote control (experimental, disabled by default and not currently possible on OS X)
- Selected tracks are always visible when scrolling through with select-next-track or select-previous-track
- Skip non-active and hidden tracks with select-previous-track and select-next-track
- Several new tooltips all over the place and better tooltip colors
- On OS X, Button2 can be emulated with Ctrl-Option-Button1
- Busses are never auto-connected to physical inputs
- Unmodified clicking in canvas rulers now sets playhead position, similar to existing behaviour in the "real" rulers. Use Ctrl- (Linux) or Command (OS X)-click/drag for new markers/ranges.
- Crossfade-editor specific keybindings: space => play xfade, left-arrow => play fade out, ctrl-left-arrow => dry fade out, right-arrow => play fade in, ctrl-right-arrow => dry fade in
- Drag-n-Drop from OS X Finder now more reliable but no longer supports MP3 or AAC (will be reverted in the future)
- Start position and Sync position clocks added popup region editor
- Better stay-on-top behaviour for certain windows
- LV2 port notification fix for GUI updating
- New German translation
- New post-export nag screen
- Per-track OSC control of solo/mute/rec-enable and gain
- Fixes:
- Removed suggestion that users can save while disconnected from JACK
- Corrected reversed handling of "show-editor-mixer" state on startup
- Fixed crasher caused by changing gain with transport stopped & panner bypassed
- Correct reverse logic for making h/w monitoring available given h/w capabilities
- Fix confusing relabelling of plugin bypass button
- Prevent double registration of ALSA sequencer ports
- Correctly initialize JACK timeout parameter when starting JACK
- Ignore triple-clicks on mute/solo/rec-enable button
- Momentary solo/mute now works
- Fix serious error when calculating interpolated Curve values (will cause tiny, almost certainly undetectable changes in automation and fade curves, but may also remove clicks)
- Fix quoting in TOC files wrap PBD::Thread... signals in a mutex to avoid crashing during startup as multiple threads "emit" the signal
- Make comboboxes a little bigger on X11
- B|B|T clocks measuring duration now use zero-based values
- New regions created by AudioFilters (Reverse/TimeFX/Transpose) inherit all relevant settings of their ancestor
- Fix for incorrect reading of fade out curve under a few circumstances
- Catch exceptions while loading AudioUnits
- Correct some glitches with playhead motion when looping/reversing
- Fix failure when opening a session by double-clicking the session file icon (OS X)
- Fix loss of "current dialog" tracking when exiting a dialog via a button (could cause crash on next Ctrl-w)
- Detect no-installed-JACK on OS X to avoid silent crashes for new users