I absolutely love ardour. It is simple, powerful, and by far the best all around DAW i have ever used. However, it is not perfect. Because of these expected imperfections, i have been forced to keep around pro tools and logic pro. If these were to be addressed, i would be able to use only one DAW, and the best one to boot.
my feature requests are as follows:
Better os x optimization
Better use of VST plugins
They look really simple and are not the intended use by the authors.
Simpler UI for interface:
Consider having a sidebar with effects that you can apply to regions
Ability to combine regions
Ability to view regions in separate windows
I’ve always thought that this would be a tremendous addition to any DAW as it would allow you to see what you wanted to see and nothing else making it far easier to edit.
Ability to edit and create VST and LADSPA plugins
Integration of a software synthesizer (hopefully the gui Qsynth of Fluidsynth)
More gain
I’ve always liked Audacity’s ability to gain to extremes. It seems that most DAWS are limited at 6 DB without effects. I know that higher than this tends to limit sound quality, but let the users decide how loud and dirty they want their music.
Ability to snap to grid
10.Ability to quickly move the edit cursor
I’ve always been angry that Ardour left this out. I always find myself finding where i want to split a clip, then zooming out, clicking the edit cursor, moving it, zooming back in, then splitting it. It’d be far easier if you could have an extra box that you click and it goes right to where you did.
Aqua integration
I’ve always liked aqua much more than X. Using ardour feels like i’m using a different os that uses control shortcuts and looks extremely different.
Thanks for reading
the_firefly
Not always. With floating-point samples, headroom is over 700 dB. Clipping can only occur at the A/D or D/A conversion stage, or any other time the samples are converted to an integer format.
I more or less agree with your conclusion, even if I don’t agree with your reasoning. There’s plenty of gain to be had, if only one knows where to find it. If nothing else, one of the several amplifier plugins will do the job.
If you normalize a track, 6db will always clip, so more is not needed. If you need more gain on the strip, you’re doing something wrong. Besides, a higher upper limit takes away less physical room allowing less fine control
steinberg’s licensing terms for use of VST and its associates specifications are incompatible with the GPL, the license that Ardour is released under. it all boils down to redistribution… blah. nevertheless, the ball is in steinberg’s court on VST usage.
this isn’t really the forum to explain everything there is to know about mastering. mastering is generally the final step you should take after having finished recording.
on the linux side of things, i really like jamin. i don’t do any mastering on Mac OS X, so i can’t give you any recommendations. many people use Audacity for simple mastering. it will allow you to use LADSPA plugins as well.
as far as #6 goes, i guess i’m still unsure what you mean. there are countless LADSPA plugins that can be used in Ardour to add and control distortion, reverb, echo, etc. there are even Mac OS X packages to install those plugins.
not to beat a dead horse, but better VST integration is wholly dependent upon licensing issues that can only be resolved by steinberg, not ardour developers.
i’ve read, many times, that the intention is not to make ardour a super-powerful editor. beyond the basic editing that we already have, you probably shouldn’t expect anything super-fancy. i often use use audacity if i need more fine-grained editing.
not sure what you mean by this… do you mean create presets for vst and ladspa plugins or create the actual plugins themselves? i don’t think you should reasonably expect any DAW to allow you to create a plugin.
needing more gain is probably something better taken care of when mastering your project in a dedicated mastering app.
my guess is that aqua integration is highly unlikely to happen. ever. one of the main reasons ardour works on OS X at all is because X11 is available for the platform. more realistically, if the OS X port of the GTK toolkit is made usable and stable, we might one day see Ardour without X11. note that this does not mean aqua.
I believe when they claimed they were being sponsored by SAE, they spoke (somewhat) of an aqua release. I could be wrong though. I also remember hearing about steinberg being a STUPID company and not letting ardour correctly use VST or something.
what would be an example of a “dedicated mastering app” (i’m a musician not a tech geek :/)
And with #6 i meant a provided plugin that allowed you to create effects, as in to apply distortion, reverb, echo, etc and change the amount of each. I believe there is a similar feature in Logic.
And thanks chris, that post really helped!
Cheers!
the_firefly
3. Simpler UI for interface:
Consider having a sidebar with effects that you can apply to regions
I believe this is a planned feature.
4. Ability to combine regions
This I believe to be planned as well.
9. Ability to snap to grid
There is already a snap function. It’s enabled by selecting the snap type from the far right drop down menu on the second row tool bar.
10.Ability to quickly move the edit cursor
I’ve always been angry that Ardour left this out. I always find myself finding where i want to split a clip, then zooming out, clicking the edit cursor, moving it, zooming back in, then splitting it. It’d be far easier if you could have an extra box that you click and it goes right to where you did.
This is already possible. To locate the edit cursor either point with the mouse and press the ‘e’ key or enter a value into the edit cursor clock, located just after the tool selection icons on the second row tool bar. You can also locate the edit cursor to the playhead position buy pressing ‘alt’ + ‘enter’; ‘enter’ on its own locates the playhead to the edit cursor position.
“10.Ability to quickly move the edit cursor
I’ve always been angry that Ardour left this out. I always find myself finding where i want to split a clip, then zooming out, clicking the edit cursor, moving it, zooming back in, then splitting it. It’d be far easier if you could have an extra box that you click and it goes right to where you did.”
Isn’t it easier to use the keyboard shortcut ‘s’ to split a region? I don’t use the edit cursor, so I could be missing what you are trying to do.