Ardour 2.7 released

After a frenetic month getting things ready for the SAE version of Ardour, I am happy to announce the public release of Ardour 2.7. For the first time, this includes public versions for OS X (Intel and (PPC) as well as our usual (source tarball. (Note: new or old users of Ardour or JACK on OS X should read this information before attempting to run Ardour.) This release is dominated by dramatic improvements in OS X GUI performance and startup time, but it also contains a lot of significant bug fixes. However, somewhat to my surprise, Ardour also accumulated quite a lot of nice new features since 2.6.1.

Features

  • Overall dramatic improvements in OS X GUI performance
  • New action to rotate editor/mixer window stacking
  • New action to cycle through mouse modes
  • Plugin windows can now have keyboard focus locked to them
  • Add missing extensions to exported files based on selected file type
  • Loop/Range ruler now visible by default
  • Default crossfade is now -3dB cut
  • Crossfade presets changed to include -6dB cut and two S-curves (icons sadly not changed yet)
  • New support for Wiimote control (experimental, disabled by default and not currently possible on OS X)
  • Selected tracks are always visible when scrolling through with select-next-track or select-previous-track
  • Skip non-active and hidden tracks with select-previous-track and select-next-track
  • Several new tooltips all over the place and better tooltip colors
  • On OS X, Button2 can be emulated with Ctrl-Option-Button1
  • Busses are never auto-connected to physical inputs
  • Unmodified clicking in canvas rulers now sets playhead position, similar to existing behaviour in the "real" rulers. Use Ctrl- (Linux) or Command (OS X)-click/drag for new markers/ranges.
  • Crossfade-editor specific keybindings: space => play xfade, left-arrow => play fade out, ctrl-left-arrow => dry fade out, right-arrow => play fade in, ctrl-right-arrow => dry fade in
  • Drag-n-Drop from OS X Finder now more reliable but no longer supports MP3 or AAC (will be reverted in the future)
  • Start position and Sync position clocks added popup region editor
  • Better stay-on-top behaviour for certain windows
  • LV2 port notification fix for GUI updating
  • New German translation
  • New post-export nag screen
  • Per-track OSC control of solo/mute/rec-enable and gain

Fixes

  • Removed suggestion that users can save while disconnected from JACK
  • Corrected reversed handling of "show-editor-mixer" state on startup
  • Fixed crasher caused by changing gain with transport stopped & panner bypassed
  • Correct reverse logic for making h/w monitoring available given h/w capabilities
  • Fix confusing relabelling of plugin bypass button
  • Prevent double registration of ALSA sequencer ports
  • Correctly initialize JACK timeout parameter when starting JACK
  • Ignore triple-clicks on mute/solo/rec-enable button
  • Momentary solo/mute now works
  • Fix serious error when calculating interpolated Curve values (will cause tiny, almost certainly undetectable changes in automation and fade curves, but may also remove clicks)
  • Fix quoting in TOC files wrap PBD::Thread... signals in a mutex to avoid crashing during startup as multiple threads "emit" the signal
  • Make comboboxes a little bigger on X11
  • B|B|T clocks measuring duration now use zero-based values
  • New regions created by AudioFilters (Reverse/TimeFX/Transpose) inherit all relevant settings of their ancestor
  • Fix for incorrect reading of fade out curve under a few circumstances
  • Catch exceptions while loading AudioUnits
  • Correct some glitches with playhead motion when looping/reversing
  • Fix failure when opening a session by double-clicking the session file icon (OS X)
  • Fix loss of "current dialog" tracking when exiting a dialog via a button (could cause crash on next Ctrl-w)
  • Detect no-installed-JACK on OS X to avoid silent crashes for new users

Development

  • GTK/OSX patch now in SVN
  • Check build host for broken mutex-based glib atomic ops
  • Two versions of clearlooks now in SVN - older, for X11 (crisp!), and newer for OS X (faster!)

Contributors

Massive thanks to Nick Mainsbridge who, with the financial support of SAE and his own dedication to the cause, pulled off a minor miracle with OS X GUI performance, as well as many SAE-specific fixes and improvements.

Other work and fixes: Sampo Savolainen, Don Fredricks, Krzysztof Foltman, Dave Robillard, and the plumber himself, Paul Davis

Awesome!!!
Ardour really has improved! It seems to work as fast as any other OS X App…
I really love to be able to work with ardour as fast as in cubase…
That’s really a great job you folks have done there!


Macbook, 2GHZ C2D, 3GB RAM, 120GB HDD, Mac OS 10.5.5 “Leopard”, Mackie Onyx Satllite FireWire Audiointerface, Ardour 2.7, Cubase ES 4.5…

PowerMac G3, 400MHz, 512MB RAM, 20+80+80Gig HDD, Mac OS 10.4.11 “Tiger”, M-Audio Delta 44 Audiointerface, Ardour 2.7 (not really as fast as on my MacBook…)

As noted in the release notes, Wiimote support is experimental. That basically means that if building it confuses you, its not ready for you to use. And we know that rules out a lot of people. Thats what we mean by “experimental”. Putting in svn but making it off by default is the easiest way of getting it out to people with the time and patience and background to try it out.

LV2 support is different though, and I need to update the build info about that. I wasn’t aware that an update was needed, to be honest. I am now.

great release guys! So much faster on os x, not even comparable: great work.

Paul and Team,

Great job, I can imagine the Mac forum will be getting a lot more traffic!

On the Linux front, could you guys be a little more forthcoming with build info? especially for those wishing to try out new stuff like LV2 support or Wiimote, For example the libraries have changed rapidly for LV2 support and this means a lot of extra compiling especially for those using older distros, just to keep up. That is not a complaint if it is clear what libs are needed. Building Ardour is becoming a bit of a brain-tease. I for one am not finding it fun, Not all of us are developers or get our kicks out of playing find-the-dependency.

I applaud the efforts directed toward our Mac users, but since we Nixers can’t benefit from the latest binaries without compiling or waiting for a package, it would be nice to be informed of changes.

To others reading, to build 2.7 with LV2 support you will need Redland (some distros call it librdf) 1.0.6 or greater and SLV2 0.6.1.

EDIT Further to this there in no Wiimote support in the Stable 2.7 Tarball