Ardour 2.6 has been released. This version is notable mostly for many dramatic improvements to GUI performance on OS X (native) and a few very important crashing fixes. But it also contains several interesting and useful new features and some non-crashing bug fixes that are nevertheless extremely significant.
Unfortunately, we discovered a bug at the last moment which has actually been present since at least 2.5. It affects the display of sessions containing automation data. I don't want to delay 2.6 any further, so we are releasing this even with the bug present, but you can expect 2.6.1 to be available soon with a fix for this problem (and who knows what else).
New Features
- make libsndfile work with newer versions of FLAC (enables building a version that can open FLAC files)
- tracks in active edit groups now perform playlist operations (create, copy, select) in unison for playlists created for the group
- embedded LV2 GTK GUI support
- allow translated version use on OSX
- add session file type icon for OSX
- shift-click now works to extend marker selections (click one, then shift-click another to select all markers between them)
- marker drag moves all selected markers
- add initial-program-change support (Ardour can send a MIDI Program Change command on startup to set up external equipment; it can do this at any later time too)
- add move-selected-tracks-{up,down} commands
- add global option to enable/disable region fades
- enable activate/deactivate fades in all selected regions
- global option to hide/show region fades
Fixes and Improvements
- massive improvements for OS X GUI speed and responsiveness
- eliminate the double-draw during zoom on linux
- fix track+strip ordering issues when sync editor+mixer order is enabled
- fix for bad synchronization with other JACK transport-aware clients
- fix reload & use of MIDI port configuration, so that per-session setup is actually used
- fix URLs for freesound access
- new swedish translation
- fix handling of MIDI pitchbend message
- handle missing pixmap files more gracefully
- Fix import dialog clocks to display times that are correct in the current session
- fix up generation of BWF field contents to avoid truncation and use correct date
- stop AU plugins that fail to load (e.g. missing dongles) from crashing ardour
- handle JACK stopping without crashing
- fix audio glitches caused by plugin automation events
- fix crash when clicking on certain region list items
- security fix for libsndfile FLAC handling
- fix position of canvas "time cursor" during dragging
- make fonts smaller on location dialog buttons
- improve performance when dragging multiple regions on the same track
- reduce some redrawing of clocks
- Speed up track resizing
- fix disappearing automation controls when automation track has been made minimum size.
- change design for how certain region list items operate if there are multiple regions selected
- allow glue-to-bars-and-beats to be toggled for all selected regions
- Set add route dialog non-resizeable so that Window Managers size it more sensibly (looked ridiculous in ion3).
- repeated time stretches/pitch shifts on the same region now use the correct original data
- new grid line cache to speed up scrolling and grid display in general
- fit-tracks now ignores (and hides) "in-the-middle" unselected tracks
- fix possible crash and/or mis-setting of end-marker during session load
Developer Improvements
- compile with gcc 4.3
- support building on Leopard
Contributors
Paul Davis, Doug Mclain, Sakari Bergen, Jesse Chappell, Sampo Savolainen, Dave Robillard, Nick Mainsbridge, Chris Cannam, Torben Hohn
