The Ardour project is pleased to announce the release of 4.1 with a great line-up of new features such as input gain control, Save As for projects, click-free changes to processor order and meter position, relative snapping, faster waveform rendering, Hi-DPI/Retina support and more! As usual, quite a few bugs have been mercilessly slayed. Encouragingly, we also have one of our longest ever contributor lists for this release.
We had hoped to be on a roughly monthly release cycle after the release of 4.0, but collaborations with other organizations delayed 4.1 by nearly a month.
<p style="margin:22px 0 0 0;">
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New Functionality
<dl class="faq">
<dt>Input Gain Control</dt>
<dd>
Ardour's mixer now includes an input gain control.
In tracks, it is positioned after the signal flow to/from
disk, and so affects the signal heard both when recording
and during playback. It can be found in the mixer strip,
near the top (honoring the top-to-bottom visual and signal
flow).
</dd>
<dt>Playback- or Capture-only device support for ALSA & Coreaudio</dt>
<dd>
It is now possible to use Ardour's native audio/midi
backends for Linux and OS X with devices that only provide
playback or capture, but not both. This can be useful, for
example, when editing using a pair of USB headphones, where
recording is not required.
</dd>
<dt>Save As</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Ardour finally offers "real Save As", which will allow you to
save the current session to a new location on disk. Several
options are available, notably whether or not to copy all the
audio/MIDI files to the new location or share them with the
existing session. It is also possible to create an empty
version of the current session this way. "Rename" now also
works more reliably.
</p>
<p>
The operation named "Save As" in previous versions has
been retitled "Snapshot (& switch to new
version)". Regular snapshotting continues to be available
as "Snapshot (& keep working on current version)"
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Windows assembler metering support.</dt>
<dd>
Metering is one of the most CPU-intensive operations done
by Ardour, second only to running plugins. On Linux and OS X,
this has been done using hand-written assembler code (more or
less the lowest level of programming language that
exists). Ardour 4.1 now has similar code for Windows, thanks
to Grygorii Zharun of Waves Audio.
</dd>
<dt>Click-free changes to processor order and meter
position</dt>
<dd>In earlier versions of Ardour, reordering plugins or
changing the metering position would often cause a click in
the audio. This is no longer the case.
</dd>
</dl>
<h2 class="section-header">User Interface Changes</h2>
<dl class="faq">
<dt>Waveform rendering</dt>
<dd>
Waveform rendering has been dramatically sped up. In
addition, the user interface no longer waits for the images of
waveforms to be drawn, but can continue operations while they
are generated in the background. This dramatically speeds up
scrolling, both vertically and horizontally, though you may
see brief intervals of time when specific regions are shown
without a waveform. It will appear very quickly, normally
just a fraction of a second.
</dd>
<dt>Stationary playhead option</dt>
<dd>
Activated via the main menu's Transport submenu..
</dd>
<dt>Layering: later is higher</dt>
<dd>
Ardour 2 contained several different models for layering
overlapping regions, which Ardour 3 simplified down to just
one, most easily termed "manual layering". Ardour 4.1 sees
the return of one of the additional layering modes, "later is
higher", which puts regions with later start positions
higher. No layering model is perfect for every workflow, but
we hope that the return of this one will be useful for many
relatively common ways of working.
</dd>
<dt>hi-DPI support, part one</dt>
<dd>
People on all platforms with high resolution displays
(e.g. Retina on OS X) will now find far fewer "ugly" icons
and text in the user interface. The support will scale up to
any sized display.
</dd>
<dt>hi-DPI support, part two</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Linux and Windows users have always been able to use the
font-scaling control to scale almost a lot of the GUI to
their own personal preference. This has now been extended
by making many elements of the GUI size themselves using
the chosen font size as a reference, rather than absolute
pixels, allowing it to work as you would expect even on
hi-DPI displays.
</p>
<p>
OS X users with Retina don't have this option, but the GUI
will still automatically display appropriately for their
hi-DPI display.
</p>
</dd>
<dt>Relative snap</dt>
<dd>
this makes it possible to move objects around without
changing their relationship to the grid. It is activated by
using a keyboard modifier while dragging, which defaults to:
Linux/Windows: <key>Alt-Window</key> OS
X: <key>Shift-Option</key>. The modifier can be changed in
the Preferences dialog (User Interaction tab)
</dd>
<dt>X-run counter in status bar</dt>
<dd>
For those who don't know, "x-run" is a term that stands
for "overrun or underrun", which describes a condition where
the computer fails to keep up with the flow of information
required by the audio interface. An overrun is where the
computer fails to read incoming audio fast enough; an
underrun is where the computer fails to deliver audio fast
enough. You should ideally never see any x-runs on a properly
configured system, but we don't all live in an ideal world.
</dd>
<dt>Plugin parameter reset button</dt>
<dd>
In a generic plugin GUI, Ardour now shows a button
that will reset all plugin parameters back to their default
value (as best as the default can be determined).
</dd>
<dt>Allow deletion of MIDI Program Changes using
the <key>Delete</key> key</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt>Peak meters now have sample-accurate fall-off, no visual jitter</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt>Automation-lane log-scale parameter support</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt>New 0dBFS peak meter</dt>
<dd>
The existing default peak meters in Ardour max out at
+6dBFS. Ardour 4.1 contains an optional new peak meter that
maxes out at 0dBFS which makes better use of screen real
estate when recording live material that can never go above
0dBFS by definition.
</dd>
<dt>Tap tempo</dt>
<dd>
When editing or adding a tempo, the dialog now offers the
chance to tap the tempo you want to use.
</dd>
<dt>Remove time</dt>
<dd>
This editing operation removes silence and audio from the
edit point, and then moves later material earlier. It can
optionally move markers, tempo and meter points etc. as well.
</dd>
</dl>
<h2 class="section-header">Fixes</h2>
<dl class="faq">
<dt> No more x-runs & noise on session-open/close</dt>
<dd>Note: JACK 1 users may still experience occasional noise
during session open.</dd>
<dt> Fix stuck midi notes during save/auto-save</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt> Fix stuck midi notes if loop-range is present</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt> Various MCP improvements & tweaks</dt>
<dd>
<ul>
<li>panner width behaviour fixed</li>
<li>Control key puts v-pot into "fine" mode</li>
<li>Clean up profile editor to remove things that
don't/can't work</li>
<li>Add an option for the MCP .device file to set the
master position</li>
<li>Allow the removal of key bindings in the profile
editor</li>
</ul>
</dd>
<dt> Properly display JACK buffersize</dt>
<dd>
When jackd is already running, the Audio/Midi Setup dialog now displays the current buffersize correctly (previously it always showed 1024).
</dd>
<dt> Fix importing old A2/A3 automation</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt> Fix Non Session Manager support</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt> VST plugins are now searched for using a case insensitive
comparison of their filename extension</dt>
<dd>This matters when plugins are on filesystems that are case-sensitive</dd>
<dt> Relax gain/fader LPF to 25Hz (was 10Hz)</dt>
<dd>Gain changes now happen faster. Most people won't hear
the difference, but trained audio engineers will know what to
look for.</dd>
<dt> Fix monitor-section polarity invert</dt>
<dd></dd>
<dt> Fix crash when switching backends.</dt>
<dd></dd>
</dl>
<h2 class="section-header">Developers</h2>
<p>Robin Gareus, Paul Davis, Nick Mainsbridge, Colin Fletcher, John Emmas, Ben
Loftis, Len Ovens, Tim Mayberry, David Robillard, Johannes Mueller, Grygorii
Zharun, Valeriy Kamyshniy, Nils Philippsen, A. Hellquist,
Nimal Ratnayake.
</p>
<p>
Czech translation update (Pavel Frich). Axiom 61 midi map
(Edgar Aichinger).
</p>