Ardour 2.5 Released

As happens all too often, its been longer than expected between releases, but finally Ardour 2.5 is ready to ease the path, soothe the brow and excite the heart of musicians and audio engineers worldwide. Tons of bug fixes and several new features will make it worthwhile for everyone and anyone to try this out.

Note that you should probably remove ~/.ardour2/ardour.bindings in order to ensure that you get the latest key bindings. As noted below, this file will no longer be created unless you explicitly edit the key bindings yourself via the GUI.

PACKAGERS and SOURCE BUILDERS please note that this release sees a new library dependency. Ardour 2.5 requires the aubio library, which is small and fast to build. Many distributions do not currently package it. You know what to do ...

OS X users The first native release of 2.5 will not be ready until at the earliest July 13th, possibly as much as several days after that. We apologize for the delay, caused by problems with our build system.

New Features

  • plugin selection via menu (per plugin "manufacturer")
  • plugin "favorites"
  • dynamic track resizing with the mouse
  • Rhythm Ferret now has note onset detection as an alternative to percussion onsets.
  • make track faders display automation-driven changes
  • add "Consolidate Range" which writes a new audio file and uses it to replace whatever was in the playlist within the range
  • add "make range to next marker" and "export range" context menu items for range markers
  • all GUI menu items/actions can now be activated using OSC
  • new "name-new-markers-at-creation" option
  • zoom-to-region (on one or both axes)
  • fit-tracks (selected tracks sized to vertically fill editor window)
  • insert-time operation to add "silence" to the timeline
  • 12 saved "view states" that save zoom levels and timeline positions
  • working latency compensation and I/O configuration for AU plugins
  • goto-wall-clock command

Fixes and Improvements

  • at least 20 crashing bugs fixed
  • use latest version of libsigc++ (potential bug fixes)
  • use version 1.2 of RubberBand for speed & quality improvements and potential patent avoidance
  • online (and available) manual updated, including correct key binding tables
  • editor GUI is now 100% 64-bit for audio timeline values
  • never save keybindings to user's ardour directory unless they change them
  • allow keybindings to use arrow keys (GTK doesn't permit this)
  • fix for plugins-do-not-work-on-all-channels bug
  • fix track selection sensitivity botch for Import action, should have been toggle-waveform-visible instead
  • Support FFT for multi channel tracks and fix analysis for tape track regions.
  • fix mix group problems caused by recursive loop when modifying gain/gui
  • make big clock stay on top even in broken desktop environments
  • fixes to correct the results of running time/pitch shifting multiple times on the same region
  • updated swedish translation
  • don't double-call JackStartFreewheeling if we're already freewheeling
  • small changes to export code to hopefully fix some bugs with range export(s)
  • minor UI fixes for clocks and Locations dialog. Prevent tape tracks from skewing the session extents
  • major fix for computing plugin I/O configuration when using mono/stereo plugins in stereo/mono tracks/busses
  • fix up scaling problems with cleanup caused by redisplaying all regions every time a file is removed
  • fix for illegal audio device selection in audio setup dialog
  • fix for plugins being shown twice in the automation menus
  • make generation of new region names scale properly rather than being O(N^2)
  • reset meter peaks when meter point is reset
  • editor faders now insensitive to unmodified scroll wheel events (Alt-scroll does the same thing)
  • change the step size for scroll-driven resizing
  • make region context menu items always operate on well-defined and reasonably obvious region selection
  • ctrl-w shortcut ("close dialog") works on plugin editors
  • make bounce range and bounce region work properly (wrong boundaries before)
  • prevent periodic auto-save from causing GUI deadlock during export-ranges
  • improve horizontal scrolling. When the playhead is moved past the end marker, the canvas will alter its boundaries as needed. The Zoom to Session button will now reset the canvas size to start-2-end plus a little extra after end, so the end marker is visible.
  • Move the Enable Track Meters option to Metering menu section
  • removing sends now cleans up fully, preventing problems when adding sends again later
  • check both whole-file and part-file regions when adding to the visible region list, and do not show regions that are region list equivalent with existing entries
  • Fix up checks for whether the track height is too small for the name highlight. Fixes irritating issue with 31 pixel height tracks having small waveforms but no name highlight.
  • make "feature lines" always be the right height as tracks resize
  • nudge clock now has a default value of 5 seconds, not zero
  • What used to be the pink recording rectangle is now blended into the recording regions so that they appear to be the same thing. Then recording specific colors are added so the waveform and region base when recording are all various shades of red during recording. *** Open Theme Manager and click Restore Defaults for these changes to apply ***

Contributors

Paul Davis, Ben Loftis, Doug Mclain, Ryan Scott, Colin Fletcher, Sampo Savolainen, Jesse Chappell, Sakari Bergen, Dominic Sacre

Development team, thank you for your continuing efforts to bring us this great piece of software! Your tireless work is much appreciated.

Paul and team,

Many thanks for your efforts, I have been anxiously waiting for this release, should I hold off until 2.5.1 (LOL). Once I get it up and running with VST I will gladly make another donation,

To all users, this is a “leaps and bounds” new version of Ardour. Please consider donating if you can. -END OF COMMERCIAL

Yes, it probably should. Sorry about that. You should be using JACK 0.109 at least, and preferably, given the problems with that release, JACK from svn. I hope to get a new JACK release out soon.

10 Praise the Programmers :wink:
20 GOTO 10

s-h-e-e-r m-a-d-n-e-s-s !

This release implements what so many users asked for: Plugin sorting, region consolidation and dynamic track resizing! What’s gonna rule the forums now?? :wink:

Also thanks for all the other stuff, wow it’s amazing. For me, 2.5 is the the most ultra-stable release!

I am celebrating this with my 100st post!

Benjamin

I get a fatal error when I try to build this latest Ardour:

libs/ardour/globals.cc: In function ARDOUR::microseconds_t ARDOUR::get_microseconds():
libs/ardour/globals.cc:386: error: jack_get_time was not declared in this scope
scons: *** [libs/ardour/globals.os] Error 1
scons: building terminated because of errors.

I have a feeling that this is because my version of jackd is not recent enough (it’s 0.102.20), but if that’s the case, shouldn’t the “configure” part of the build process produce a fatal error and tell me which version it needs?

Hello,

after upgading jack to its svn 2.5 built just fine on my oldish Ubuntu 7.10 (aubio is in the repos). And it runs great!! :slight_smile:

Especially the new horizontal resize for the tracks opens new ways for me to work with audio in Ardour - I tried to think for 2 h that I am in Samplitudes Wave-Editor and I did not wake up screaming but with a big smile :slight_smile: 2.5 really works as a pure Waveeditor and combined with the multitracking, the new plugin-section and the export-range function it can do even more than that.

Thank you all for a first-class new version of a first class program!

nostrum fungitur

Congrats to Paul and the rest of the development team. When are you going to do an Ardour boot camp? Charge maybe $100 a head? I’d go. I’ll bring a box of wine just for you Paul. I’d love to get into the more advanced features of this great application.

Pat

http://tllts.org - The Linux Link Tech Show

Congratulations! This software is the brightest star in the dark cosmos. Just orderd 7 ardour shirts - for each day one :wink: Ardour fan Martino from DI