Ardour 3.4 is released, after a month and half of the lazy, hot, travel-filled
days of the end of summer (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, at
least). This is primarily a maintainance release, with a couple of new
features that will prove useful for various users. Note: one
of the fixes addresses a very serious issue with session clean-up in
cases where time-stretched or pitch-shifted regions are
present. Anyone who ever uses these features of Ardour
is absolutely and unequivocally advised to upgrade.
As usual you can download it from the usual
place, and as usual subscribers get this update without
cost. Thanks to everyone for their support (and encouragement).
Once again, the OS X release situation has still not improved, though a demo
copy of 3.4 is available (fully featured except that is has no video timeline, no saving or
restoring of plugin settings, and no plugin presets).
Read more below for full details.
New Features
7 new meter types: DIN, EBU, Nordic, BBC, VU, K14 and K20 (total meter types
now stands at 9)
optional master bus meter now available in transport bar
MIDI data is now forwarded "around" plugins with no MIDI output/input
for export, add CAF to support audio file formats
Fixes
fix extremely hard-to-fix damage done to session when cleaning up any session
containing time-stretched and/or pitch-shifted regions.
fix issue with timecode subframe rounding
fix issue tracking LTC when locate occurs when stopped
fix issues with removing ports from tracks + busses (they were never
completely removed)
fix a crash when deleting a bus
MIDI Clock can now send positional information correctly
MIDI trace window now prints human readable version of MIDI clock messages
fix long term issue that could silence or add noise to channels not processed
by a plugin
make K-20 the default meter type for the master bus
some meter polishing (font, colors, NaN & inf protection, etc)
when importing audio with "1 track per channel", correctly name each track
with a different name, to fix problems when reloading the session
meters cannot be deactivated anymore
support for LV2 plugins using the KXstudio:external-ui extension
fix special handling of scroll wheel when vertically zooming
fix crash if a folder being added to the shortcut folder (in the generic GTK
filechooser) is already there.
re-organize library initializations during startup
Developers
Robin Gareus, Michael Fisher, Tim Blechmann, Colin Fletcher, Tim
Mayberry, Paul Davis
<h2>Testers</h2>
<p>
Many Ardour users have tested aspects of 3.4 during development, but particular
thanks for their intensive testing and extensive feedback go to Chris Goddard,
Axel Mueller, Conor McCormack.
We regret that there has been a problem with your order. Please contact us via email at paul@linuxaudiosystems.com if it is necessary to resolve the issue described below.
We regret that there has been a problem with your order. Please contact us via email at paul@linuxaudiosystems.com if it is necessary to resolve the issue described below.
Problem
still working on trying to figure out what is happening. the web server can’t find the x86 3.4 release file, even though it is clearly there and in place. hopefully the morning will bring some insight …
Awesome work! Looking forward to upgrading shortly.
Very curious about the MIDI plugin forwarding changes, and whether it’ll affect mapping of MIDI and plugin controls to hardware interfaces. Any more info about this in docs or on the mailing list?
samtuke: the MIDI handling changes will no visible effects on that other stuff. It simply means that if MIDI is flowing through a track or bus, it continues to flow even if one of the plugins it flows “through” doesn’t actively accept or output MIDI.
Excelent work, the new meters are pretty good and ive noticed ive got a 3rd meter on stereo tracks, im assuming this is a mono meter of the combined left and right?
I’ve just loaded up a project i had been having trouble with in ardour 3.3 to see if it still gave me trouble, and unfortunatly it does. While fixing some missing notes, i had a note not get penciled into a region. I had to create it forward of the start of the region and then resize it so it started in the right place but when i played the track when it got to that point fluidsynth plugin seemed to crap out when it tried to play that note with a burst of very short noise then the remainder of that midi track (drums) didnt play despite there being midi data being sent.
Then when i deleted the note to try and re-add it ardour crashed.
I’ll get some debuging info up when i can, and if i get time i may start the project from scratch and rebuild all the parts from fresh and see if the same problems happen to rule out any errors that may have cropped in .
In 3.3, there is an issue with Windows VSTs on mono tracks: If one inserts a stereo VST plugin, the left channel is louder than the right one, or vice versa. It seems to me, that the automatic “conversion” to a stereo channel has an issue with Windows VSTs. (The workaround is to insert an LV2 plugin before the VST such as Calf Vintage Delay that makes the track stereo, and set this plugin to bypass.) Is this error still there in 3.4?
I don’t know how enthusiastic you are about Windows VSTs, but if there is an active development, I would be willing to do some more testing with 3.4 and a more detailed problem description and file a bug for this.
@veda_sticks: The 3rd meter is likely the MIDI data. ie you have a MIDI-track with a stereo synth on it). As for the odd midi editing behaviour, please file a ticket in the bug-tracker (it might already be there). As far as I know, there have been no changes regarding MIDI editing since 3.3.
Thanks for the the information, i already have a bug report submitted ill add some more information with 3.4 running. I did have a problem with tal plugins II and III crashing ardour when loading the gui, but i worked out that it was LXDE causing the issue. Once i logged back into KDE i was able to load the guis again without any problems.
I think im going to be moving back to av linux. KX studio while a nice distro AV linux seems to be the most stable.
@Paul: Well I guess you’ve seen enough discussions about Windows VSTs and Ardour. Just a minor remark: Unfortunately, Voxengo, who are the creaters of some plugins that are essential to me, denied my request to port to Linux(VST).
Still, one question remains unanswered to me: Do you want bug reports on Windows VST issues, or is this considered a dead end anyways?
I just donated and downloaded the .tar file - are you planning to provide distribution packages as well, at least for Ubuntu LTS? Or did I miss something and v3.4 packages exist somewhere already?