Ardour 4.4 released

The Ardour project is pleased to announce the release of 4.4. Like 4.2, this is primarily a bug fix release, but the list of fixes is long. Stability and correctness with MIDI is much improved, and most users will benefit in some way from the long list of fixes.

The significant GUI changes we planned to include in this release will now be in a soon-to-appear future version (or in the nightly builds in the very near future).

GCC 5 Compatibility on Linux

In version 5 (since g++5.1) the GNU C Compiler changed the C++11 interface in an incompatible way. Ardour itself is not affected, but the combination of some plugins and Ardour is. If you are using a GNU/Linux distribution that compiles plugins with the new gcc5 C++11 ABI, choose gcc5. If you do not know, use gcc4 (fall/winter 2015). This is only relevant for a dozen 3rd party plugins which directly or indirectly use C++11 features. Known affected plugins: abgate, ams-lv2, amsynth, beatslash, deteriorate, eq10q, guitarix, ingen, midimsg, newtonator, triceratops, vocproc.

Robin Gareus has already done the required work to create gcc5-built versions of Ardour, but for now they are available only on the nightly site. A future release will see them available via the official release site.

 <p style="margin:22px 0 0 0;">
   <a class="btn btn-primary btn-large" href="http://ardour.org/download.html">Download&nbsp;&nbsp;<i class="icon-download-alt icon-white"></i></a>
 </p>

 <h2>Substantive Changes/Features/Fixes</h2>
  <ul>
<li>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.</li>
<li>Fixed loop recording (inadvertently broken for several releases).</li>
<li>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. .</li>
<li>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.</li>
  </ul>

  <h2>General Changes</h2>

  <ul>
<li>"Save As" will refuse to write to an existing
  folder/directory.</li>
<li>"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.</li>
<li>Allow export of loop range without actually looping.</li>
<li>Improve CPU AVX support detection.</li>
<li>Fixed locating to current wallclock time for large time
  values.</li>
<li> 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.</li>
<li>Fixed various potential issues at session closing.</li>
<li>Improve error reporting from AudioEngine when trying to
  configure audio hardware.</li>
<li>Provide more details if a sessions fails to be created.</li>
<li>Improve loading speed for large sessions (1000 tracks).</li>
<li>Fixed a deadlock when removing tracks/busses and using JACK1.</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>Ensure that correct audio is heard when region layering is changed.</li>
<li>Use a single consistent method for computing DSP load on
  all platforms, with all backends.</li>
<li>Avoid creating excessively short regions during Strip Silence operation.</li>
<li>Avoid possible endless loop while detecting silence.</li>
<li>Reduce chances of a bug in the OS X locale libraries from
  causing crashes.</li>
<li>Fixed duplication of multiple selected regions.</li>
<li>Correctly and consistently initialize track/bus group properties.</li>
<li>Fixed crash during session region cleanup.</li>
<li>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).</li>
<li>Bring Ardour's Broadcast WAVE USID value into compliance
  with EBU-R99.</li>
<li>Fixed install on systems where using su(1) changes directories.</li>
<li>Fixed broken onset analysis.</li>
  </ul>      

  <h2>Plugins</h2>
  <ul>
<li>Refuse to load LV2 plugins if their buffer size
  requirements cannot be satisfied.</li>
<li>Do not list LV2 plugins that cannot be used because they
require a fixed blocksize.</li>
<li>Generally improve handling of missing plugins so that
  sessions are not damaged by the temporary unavailability of 
  a plugin.</li>
<li>Fixed the position of cut/copy-and-pasted plugins.</li>
<li>Fixed AudioUnit port count, which allows loading various
  Native Instrument plugins such as Reaktor 5.</li>
<li>Added command line option to completely disable plugins.</li>
<li>Fixed handling of VST audioMasterPinConnected callback.</li>
<li>Allow loading of huge (10MB) VST plugin state.</li>
  </ul>

  <h2>GUI</h2>

  <p>
<em>
  When describing keybindings below, "Primary" is used to
  describe <code>Control</code> on Linux and Windows, and <code>Command</code> on OS X
</em>
  </p>


  <ul>
<li>Fixed waveform display issues when changing waveform shape
  from rectified to normal or vice versa.</li>
<li>Added a reset option to the context menu for the shuttle control.</li>
<li>Allow creation of new points on a region envelope by
  clicking on the envelope line.</li>
<li>Added column titles in the list of "Recent Sessions".</li>
<li>Alter "Stop" button in the Audio/MIDI setup dialog to
  function as a "Start/Stop" button, and remove the "Apply" button.</li>
<li>Fixed issues where waveform display used the wrong data.</li>
<li>Cancel button for Import dialog is now a Close button.</li>
<li>Change OK button on Import dialog to "Import".</li>
<li>Correctly display plugin parameter values when dragging
  automation points/lines.</li>
<li>Fixed log-scaled automation parameter display.</li>
<li>Visually indicate regions waiting for their audio peak
  data to be generated.</li>
<li>Fixed inconsistent text sizing in the editing canvas.</li>
<li>Added avoiding GPU rendering to preferences
  dialog. This is
  helpful on some Linux systems with buggy video device
  drivers. See <code>Edit &gt; Preferences &gt; GUI &gt; Disable Graphics
  Hardware Acceleration</code>.</li>
<li>Allow overriding lock-to-video when moving video or audio.</li>
<li>Fixed drawing of short cross fades.</li>
<li>Sort "Recent Sessions" by modification time.</li>
<li>Don't try to split a region when dragging.</li>
<li>Update Import dialog options when/if track selection changes.</li>
<li>Fixed marker display after a marker is removed.</li>
<li>When editing a clock display, swallow illlegal keys rather
than passing them onto the main window where they might have
  some unintended effect.</li>
<li>Primary-Shift-click on the solo lock button now applies to
  all tracks/busses, consistent with Primary-Shift-click on other buttons.</li>
<li>Avoid a case where the color of selected text was the same
  as the background, making it invisible.</li>
<li>Correctly set waveform height when switching between
  stacked and overlaid view modes.</li>
<li>Make all entries in the track list context menu actually work.</li>
<li>Fixed incorrect setting for "Import to Region List" on first
  use of the import dialog.</li>
<li>Avoid duplicate shortcut folders in file browsers.</li>
  </ul>

  <h2>Windows</h2>
  
  <ul>
<li>Drop the use of C++ fstreams to reduce issues with
  non-Latin characters in filenames on Windows.</li>
<li>Option to install without WASAPI support, which helps startup on Windows 10.</li>
<li>Close all files before Session > Cleanup, so that it can
  work on Windows.</li>
<li>Fixed MIDI Sysex I/O on Windows.</li>
<li>Fixed issues with onset analysis on Windows.</li>
<li>Added "Refresh Devices" button to the Audio/MIDI setup
  dialog on Windows to pick up new
<li>Added a "None" device to the PortAudio backend, allowing
  disabling either input or output, but not both.</li>
  devices or external ASIO buffer size changes.</li>
  </ul>

  <h2>Click/Metronome</h2>
  <ul>
<li>Added an easy way to reset the click sound(s) to their
  defaults.</li>
<li>The click sounds are now normalized to -6dBFS.</li>
<li>Allow enabling/disabling of the click "emphasis" sound.</li>
  </ul>	

  <h2>MIDI</h2>
  <ul>
<li>MIDI Tracer window now shows MSB of appropriate messages.</li>
<li>Fixed a subtle bug in ordering of MIDI events that caused
  missing note-off messages.</li>
<li>Highlight notes based on mouse position on track header keyboard.</li>
<li>Exclude MIDI CC parameters with no data from being
  displayed when "Show Existing Automation" is chosen.</li>
<li>Fixed issues with linked (cloned) MIDI regions on different tracks.</li>
<li>Fixed issues with de-selecting MIDI notes.</li>
<li>Handle a missing MIDI file without crashing.</li>
  </ul>

  <h2>MIDI/Mackie Control Surfaces</h2>

  <ul>
<li>Save/restore generic MIDI control surface "motorized" setting.</li>
<li>New Mackie Control device files for configurations with 3 surfaces.</li>
<li>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.</li>
  </ul>

  <h2>Developers</h2>
  <p>
Robin Gareus, Paul Davis, Nick Mainsbridge, Ben Loftis, Len Ovens, Tim
Mayberry, John Emmas, Colin Fletcher, Damien Zammit, Guy
Sherman, André Nusser, Mathias Buhr, Todd Naugle
  </p>

You cannot imagine, how welcome this release is! Lookout for another primetime article on Ardour, featuring this brand new 4.4 in one of the next issues of the german Linux User Magazine!
Thanks a lot!
I think I’ll spend this weekend making screenshots of new awsomeness :wink:

Which is good! But Ardour4 seems still can’t play both keyboard & midi data at same time!

You can easily clone a track and thus play its instrument as you listen to a previously made recording.
While I understand, that additive recording of MIDI would be a feature, I certainly dont see a great need for it. There is no such feature for Audio either…

Yay, sounds good. Will try ASAP.

Where can I read about what the upcoming “significant GUI changes” are?

Generally improve handling of missing plugins so that sessions are not damaged by the temporary unavailability of a plugin.
This is really great news for opening old session files. I've been manually editing them to fix the problem so far. Thanks!

@bdp: Ardour will be adopting a “tabbed” model in which, if the user prefers, both the editor and mixer are tabs in the same window (along with some other dialogs also). The user can, of course, tear off the tabs to get them into their own windows, and the program will remember those choices.

@christophski remembering plugin state is intended for moving recent (Ardour4) sessions around on different machines or OS.

It should work correctly and not loose any information when opening Ardour 3 sessions, but Ardour2 will probably loose automation for missing plugins (A2 used a different format for automation and may or may not be converted correctly to the new format if the plugin is missing).

New sessions (since 4.4) do save plugin i/o configuration. If you load an older session and a plugin is not available, Ardour does not know how many audio/midi inputs/outputs that plugin is supposed to have and makes an educated guess… This won’t affect the plugin state, but follow up plugins or panning may be messed up temporarily while the plugin is n/a. Easy fix: load/re-save the session once with the plugin installed in Ardour 4.4.

@x42 most of the problems I was havign was with moving from kxstudio plugins to standard ubuntu build plugins as they used different URLs. I managed to fix it with multiple find & replace on the xml but this will be nice for the future to make sure plugins don’t get removed from a session without realising.

Well done¡¡¡arodour team…i am new in the forum i ve just registered and i ve downloaded the great great ardour 4.4 version…i think there is a little bug in the list editor as this doesnt refelect the regions content when it is moved…it remains displaying the original content when it was recorded…
2:- also in list editor spme values pf the note ticks are not very clear when quantizing sixtheent notes ,aardour reso is 1920 per beat …am i correct??? …so i would be 0, 480. 960 1440 …in a quantized layered take of hh in a drum take of sixtheent i obteined: 1818 378 858 1338 …its sounds in deed quantized but i cant expñlained myself this values…is there some inteligent quantization function in ardour…such as for overlayed takes in drums, to give a more human feel…???..well thanks for the help here in forum congratulations to all the ardour development team…sprry for my bad english …saludos desde México

Bugs belong on http://tracker.ardour.org. Bugs reported in the forums will generally be ignored and/or forgotten. See also http://ardour.org/how_to_report_a_bug

ohh sorry …thanks a lot i will post there¡¡¡

Thanks Paul…and keep on with the great Ardour Job