ardour 2.0 beta 9 released

Another 2 weeks, another beta release. No DMG yet for OS X, but the tarball is available.

The changelog is persnickety but fulsome:

  • various improvements and automation for VST-support build process
  • new playlist creation more reliable and slightly easier to use
  • Frontier Designs Tranzport support now included in tarball
  • timecode clock mode now shows FPS and drop/nondrop status,
  • audio frames clock shows nominal sample rate with pull up/down
  • big clock is bigger, clearer and glows bright red when recording
  • many, many fixes for automation drawing and editing
  • more reliable crossfade creation
  • new fader widget
  • gain numeric display is now editable to directly set gain in dB
  • defer history loading until the correct time
  • save plugin automation state
  • crossfade views are only as long as crossfades themselves
  • regions are translucent while trimming or dragging
  • show verbose time cursor when copy-grabbing regions
  • all transport clocks update when dragging playhead
  • add support for 80 or 100 subframes per frame for timecode
  • no auto-play after stopping a loop
  • right-hand editor notebook sized retained at all times
  • add "reset region gain envelope"
  • fix to avoid stuck tearoff drags
  • solo/mute/rec-enable now MIDI bindable again
  • FFT analysis window has better representation of low frequencies
  • hover-expand mode removed for several treeviews
  • fix broken IO connection dialog for non-english users
  • display timecode from BWF in soundfile browser
  • several more icons from Thorsten Wilms
  • mute sends+inserts when a route is not soloed but others are
  • small theme color changes
  • fixes to compilation/revision system, hopefully works for all now
  • track naming patch
  • canvas size allocations now more efficiently handled
  • region view respond to changes in fade in/out curves
  • undo/redo possible for some fade in/out operations
  • automation tracks extend to max_frames
  • fix display of +/- buttons in edit group list
  • undo/redo support for changing region start position, and changing end/length values for regions

Many thanks to Nick Mainsbridge, Sampo Savolainen, Taybin Rutkin and newcomers Brian Ahr and Chris Goddard. Brian in particular has been fixing bugs left, right and center, and everyone is excited to have him around to help.

Just curious, no pressure intended, but is it expected to have OSX DMG files available for each beta iteration, or will they only be done occasionally? Haven’t tried to set up the build environment here after reading all the problems everyone else was having. :slight_smile:

Downloaded, compiled like a charm, had a glance: Cool new looks!! :smiley:

Impressive list of fixes and updates for a beta increment. Well done!

It’s very nice! I’m using it primarily now instead of .99-3. Just keep .99-3 around (with backups of sessions, of course) in case Beta 9 stops working for me, but that hasn’t happened. (Knock on wood!)

Very nice work!

First Look: Installation and first impressions on Ardour2

Props to Ardour devs, Ardour2 is AWESOME!

I want to share my experiences building & using the latest Ardour on Linux. I got the latest source from subversion today and built on my machine. A couple of problems, first I did not have all of the necessary dependencies, but I was able to get them all from my repositories (either Fedora Extras or PlanetCCRMA). For folks new to building stuff from source, note that a dependency on “jack-audio-connection-kit” means you have to also get “jack-audio-connection-kit-devel” so that you actually have the sources. You can use “sudo yum provides XXX” to find out what package contains a certain piece of code. For example, using “sudo yum provides lrdf”, I found that “lrdf” is actually found in “liblrdf” package. Then you can use YUM to install “liblrdf”.

Next, the build process could not find “Makefile.in”, when it was trying to build. I ended up copying the “./ardour2/Makefile” (& renaming to “Makefile.in”) and placing it in “./ardour2/libs/gtkmm2/” and “./ardour2/libs/gtkmm2/gtkmm/”. At this point I was able to build. I don’t know if this is really the right thing to do, but the result was a working ardour2, so that’s good enough for me.

Next, to install, I was not able to put files in common areas (outside my home directory), so I needed root privs. I ran “sudo scons install -y” and everything came out great. Next I copied “./ardour2/icons/icon/ardour_icon_tango_48px_red.png” to “/usr/share/pixmaps/” so that I could add Ardour2 to the gnome menu & have the great new icon available.

So now I have ardour2 running, and man is it sweet!!

The UI is great, the menus are vastly improved, I already loved this app, but now it’s even better. Some of the quirks from earlier versions are gone (can’t delete tracks sometimes, disconnecting all inputs in mixer crashes ardour etc). Although I did find a couple of things that struck me:

  1. “Soloing” a track doesnt appear to work. Although Mute does work correctly.
  2. The new F11 full screen mode is a nice touch although I probably will not use it. Instead my preference would be to have some way of hiding the right panel (“Regions / Tracks / etc”) because 95% of the time I won’t want to see it at all, but periodically I’d like to be able to hit a little arrow & have it expand outwards, then when i’m done, be able to stow it again.
  3. why is there a scrollbar on the left side if I dont’ need it? why not hide it until I haev enough tracks to warrant it? Not a huge deal, but a nice refinement.

Overall, I am VERY impressed with the new version. It really is a huge step forward in usability. I have spent countless hours using this great software over the past couple of years, and it’s time I give back a little. I’m going to score up an ardour t-shirt to spread the word and support the devs. I suggest everyone that gets as much out of ardour that I do, do the same.

By the way, I had to search for the t-shirt link. Can someone please put this link on the right panel called “Support Ardour” above or below the paypal link??

Thanks so much for this amazing piece of software, and for all your hard work!