Win32 question

Hello,
How can I convert this cool tool to Win32 platform? Maybe Cygwin will help? Any hints are more than welcomed.
Thanks
Have a nice day

Why doesn’t Ardour run on Windows ?

There have been several discussions about porting Ardour to Windows. The obstacles are relatively few in number, but rather substantial in significance. Ardour was written to run on operating systems that properly and efficiently support a portable operating system standard called POSIX (endorsed by the US government and many other large organizations). Linux and OS X both do a good job of supporting POSIX, but Windows does not. In particular, the efficiency with which Windows handles certain aspects of the POSIX standard makes it very hard to port Ardour to that platform. It is not impossible that we will port Ardour at some point, but Windows continues to be a rather unsuitable platform for pro-audio work despite the improvements that have been made to it in the last few years.

Actually you have a lot of ways to get ardour up and running:

  1. use linux
  2. use macosx
  3. download the code, make your own port to win, release it under gpl and use it.
    And if you want to try ardour you could always make a double partition on your win pc. Linux doesn’t eat you…
I am sure Microsoft will come out with some solution

I am a computing engineer specialized in network and system administration. For more than 10 years, I have tryed nearly every version of windows from 3.11 up to XP SP2… Microsoft never came out with any solution especialy regarding system performance. And after all these years and versions, I think one is allowed to loose faith…

May be,developer of Ardour can discuss with them

Maybe the devs could send Bill Gates an email listing your concerns about Windows’ realtime performance not forgetting to mension that ardour is GPL ?

Actually, that is rubbish. You have some very capable DAWs on Windows, such as Ableton Live, Sonar (Cubase is not very good). I’ve had no problem with Sonar on Windows with HW supporting latencies down to 5 ms. That said, an OS DAW for Windows would be really needed. I have good experience in multithreaded design/impl on Win32 so I think I shall look into it anyway…

Really!!! Why bother… …

A windows version may be good to get people interested, but with ultra simple to install distros such as studio 64 (easier and quicker to install than XP) and VST plugins available on 32 bit systems, is there really a need?

Okay , so like myself you may have to suffer a dual boot for some apps, such as MIDI hardware with only win32 programming interfaces… However the performance boost is worth it… quoting robiwan “I’ve had no problem with Sonar on Windows with HW supporting latencies down to 5 ms”, me too but at a cost of 80% CPU utilisation as well and the need to turn off networking and other services. That’s compared to 12 channels playback and 8 channels recording with an average of 2 plugins per playback channel while recording happily running at 1.5ms latency at a cost of only 30% CPU utlisation on the same system. It’s not comparing apples with apples as it’s not using ardour on both OS’s but enough to convince most. I don’t understand the technical side of it, but it seems the FAQ is correct.

All in all, if someone wants to port it to windows, go for it, but let the devs keep working in their preferred POSIX compliant OS.

Allan K
sonofzev
Littlewolf Music
Melbourne Australia

imo we NEED NOW Ardour + jack on windows.
And Ardour needs it too… Time has come…

I have 3 computers

1° dual core 2,8
dual boot winXP / fervent software/linux (need win for my job because i work with dragon naturally speaking)

2° céléron 2GHZ
64Studio/STG

3° old notebook on Ubuntu.

But even on 1° , excepting for DNS, i work only with free software

  • Open Office.org
  • SPIP
  • File zilla
  • Audacity (+ Ladspa)
  • mozilla and so on… ^^
  • Delhamp
  • VLC etc…

So porting Ardour and jack to windows could be THE CHANCE of ardour. Most of people doesn’t want to try Linux because it’s not easy and because most of soundcards can’t be used under Linux. But they already use Free Software…

I promised I wouldn’t enter this argument anymore… but both Creative and RME seem to have bowed out (and possibly even M-Audop_, so ultimately I agree with Coppolani, ardour on xp might be the chance but don’t leave that up to the ardour devs as they have much more important work to do …

although illegal (and i will never go that way) Apple has paved the way for others to avoid MS’s silly design of an OS…

jack is already ported to windows.and I commend anyone who ports ardour to Win, but only for the purpose of leading people into something better… but again I stress let this not be a priority… let ardour prove itself in being a superior system, and I’m confident it will

that’s all

Work has already begun on porting ardour to windows. It was part of the google summer of code project. I have no idea how stable it is, or if it’s even in a runnable state, but at least the work has begun for the windows users out there. I’m not even sure it’s available for testing.