now that version 2 is out of the way...

what kinds of things do you think should be focused on for the next major overhaul? i am aware of the roadmap of course, i am more thinking what users wish for. here’s a list of my thoughts to get started:

  1. full midi functionality.
    i tried to use rosegarden the other day, and while i was impressed with the effort they have put into the program, it is definately not for me. if ardour supports midi editing, ladspa/dssi instruments etc i would be in heaven ;)
  2. svg and cairo support
    i love the look of ardour, but i think in order for it to not get left behind these technologies can make a huge difference in appearence and allow for many subtle things such as antialiasing on waveforms, subtle transparencies etc.
  3. scripting engine
    i know that the xml format is open and editable outside of ardour, but i think a relatime scripting engine would be extremely useful. there is a thread on this so i won't elaborate here.
  4. built in jack control/patchbay
    i feel weird running qjackctrl on my desktop, but haven't found anything better. maybe integrating something like patchage or similar might work? i remember in logic being able to rewire the internals, and whilst i know that you can do that with ardour externally (qjackctl, patchage etc) but having an internal editor using the same gtk theme and benefiting from all the wonderful svg/cairo improvements ;) would be an awesome feature to show off the flexibility of ardour. it could also do things specific to ardour that don't go out through jack, ie automation, 'targets' for the script engine to manipulate, midi etc

anyone else with ideas? or any criticism of these ones? :slight_smile:

you don’t want the the roadmap anymore, really. you want this:

http://ardour.org/development/post_2_0

Items 1, 2 and 4 in your list are all well underway in terms of conceptualizing, predesign etc. Item 3 is not likely to be a part of the 2.X series, but you never know.

wow, that was easy :wink:

To be honest, I think Ardour 2.1 should be another bugfix release instead of cramming all these new features in.

There are still bugs that cause the application to immediately crash and exit(like the recent thread about the soundtrack made in Ardour).

Now that 2.0 is out the door. There’s gonna be more extensive testing by a much larger audience. I’m sure a lot more showstopper bugs will come out of this.

There will be a bug fix release. Post 2.0 doesn’t specify version numbers and it’s not like everything on the list has to be in the next feature release.

another idea:

‘Locking’ tracks:

basically if i have a track with dozens of effects (compresser, eq, noise gate, whatever) and i am pretty happy with it for now, being able to take a virtual bounce of the track to a temporary playback track with the effects prerendered and play this instead of the realtime processed track could save a lot of processing power (at the expense of disk space of course, but i think this is a fair tradeoff). of course, at any time the user can ‘unlock’ the track, which re-enables the plugins and switches back to the original file if they need to change anything. i assume that something like this can be done with regions, but a button in all the tracks (or right-click menu option) to quickly lock/unlock a track would be incredibly efficient.

i know logic (and probably other programs) uses something like this, although i jumped ship to here before they implemented that, so i don’t know what their version is like.

i think this will be even more important once the midi functionality is built in. with multiple synths running at once, each filtered through it’s own effects chain, there is a lot of processing going on.

the only problem with it that i can think of off the top of my head is how to treat inserts/sends in the track. logic and other programs could get away with this since the sends always come after the inserts, so they can just render up to that point. but if you have a track in ardour like this:

input
effect
effect
insert
send
effect
effect
send
fader
etc

then do you pre-render the sends? or make one copy of the locked track for each point before a send/insert? i think the second way is most accurate, but would use a lot of disk space. maybe if multiple sends etc are detected a warning should come up:

your track contains multiple sends.
in order to lock this track, a new
temporary copy of the track will be
created at each send point. this will
take up a lot of disk space.
are you sure you wish to continue?

maybe even put a disk-usage estimate in the message (and have the option to permanently disable the message of course).

food for thought :slight_smile:

Cairo is yummy. Ardour + Cairo = super happy sandwich.

What about ‘linking’ snapshot to a ‘master snapshot’?

  • All linked snapshots will follow track layout, routing and/or effects from the ‘master’ snapshot.
  • Rightclicking a (not ‘master’) snapshot allows you to specify what to link.
  • Removing a track/bus/etc from the ‘Master’ snapshot will remove them from all non-master snapshots (WITH WARNING!!! + added to undo history)
  • You can add trackes/busses/effects to other snapshots without losing the links to the master snapshot

This way recording multiple songs in one large project would be a breeze. If you later on decide to change routing, track layout, etc, you don’t have to open all snapshots to repeat the same action over and over again…

-H-

I’m a Pyramix-User and - before I get into Ardour - I NEED my keyboard shortcuts (I have my own to import). That’s what I wish for the most. Second thing would be source-destination editing.

Otherwise, thanks for the program - the world was waiting for this…

mxph

You can configure most keyboard shortcuts via editing the ardour.bindings file in your system. It contains all possible actions you can bind keys to in a relatively easy to understand format.

I like porl’s “locking” idea. On Cubase it’s called “freezing”

Can’t you freeze tracks already?
In the right click menu on a track -> Freeze.

I prefer the implementation in Ardour to Cubase as you can still edit the frozen track in Ardour after freezing it.

Edits are lost on the frozen track if you unfreeze, but copies to another track remain.

like i said, i wasn’t sure if this was implemented already. i don’t have access to my ardour pc at the moment. that’s good news though :slight_smile:

Some day you will have to update the file system to xml 2-the longer you wait the less useful Ardour will become,and don’t imitate steinberg’s xml 1.1-it is not much better then aMIDI file, or Apple’s xml-which only works with Final Cut Pro.