Ardour3 (OS X and Linux) Beta 1a Released
26th
November 2011
After a furious 3 months (more
than 500 code commits), the Ardour team has announced
the release of Ardour 3.0 Beta
1. This is
the first version of Ardour 3 that has support for OS X
(Intel only for now, sorry PPC users), where you will
find fully functional AudioUnit instrument support among
all the other goodies that Ardour 3 brings. The list
below documents the other many changes, including
support for Linux native VSTs, an initial new version of
Freesound browsing, some shinier new buttons, and a
metric ton of bug fixes and improvements.
New Features:
Linux “native” VST support.
Give route groups their own colors.
Allow route groups to color their tracks.
Add option to insert time on all a track’s
playlists.
Option to glue new markers to bars and
beats.
Implement invert selection for MIDI notes.
Add Selection-by-note-range for MIDI notes.
Add session option
“MIDI-region-copy-is-fork”. If set, all MIDI
region copies will be independent from each
other; settable via Session->Properties->Misc.
Offer explicit monitoring choices, so that
tracks can be forced to monitor their inputs
(and more).
Auto-connect new track/bus inputs to
physical ports is now the default.
Auto-connect new track/bus outputs to the
master bus is now the default.
Experimental, incomplete reimplementation of
Freesound browser (part of the import dialog),
allowing users to find and use audio from the
vast Freesound audio database.
Add option to have track/bus selection
linked between the editor and mixer windows.
GUI Changes:
On OS X, switch all use of Control and
Alt/Option keys (closer to Apple’s standard
modifier usage).
New ArdourButton widget, now widely used for
buttons that convey state through their visual
appearance.
Rearrange the transport bar; items not
frequently modified while working (auto-input,
time-master) have been moved to
Session->Properties or Edit->Preferences.
Use evenly distributed green palette for
MIDI notes.
Use standard selection colour (purple) for
selected MIDI notes.
Less day-glo panner colours based on audio
track colours.
Make meters with different colour parameters
actually work.
Fix meter colour gradients (mid and top were
swapped).
Fix meter colour range to again have a hard
knee at 0dB and twiddle colours so >0dB levels
are red and stand out.
Fix style of the clock in the insert time
dialogue.
Increase threshold for zoom-by-horizontal
movement; ignore movements to y positions
outside the scroomer; round page size and value
to prevent ‘quivering’ during drags.
Put session-modified asterix in mixer window
title as well as editor.
Redesigned info bar (ideas from Chris
Goddard).
Reorganize Preferences dialog a bit.
Add Visibility control for a growing number
of repeated GUI elements (particularly in mixer
strips).
Restore mixer strip comments button, but
optionally visible.
Don’t show busses tab in MIDI connection
managers, since there are no MIDI busses yet.
Clean up display of channel buttons in
monitor section so that it looks optimal for
both normal people and ambisonics freaks.
Add options to add ports to input/output
menus on mixer strips.
Add an option to disable editor update
during drags of the summary pane (helps GUI
performance with large sessions).
Add option to set
default-session-parent-dir.
Don’t offer up Send editors for internal
sends (too confusing, because they are not like
JACK-level sends).
Add tooltips for plugins/inserts/sends in
the mixer strip.
Drastic overhaul of keyboard handling in
mixer window.
Fix port matrix dimensions on non-24-bit
displays.
Make “OK/Apply” the default response in
several dialogs.
Set window icons for the startup window.
Provide global prelight option (its in Edit
-> Preferences->Interface).
Alert the user if a connection is made which
causes feedback, and preserve the route graph in
the state that it was in before the feedback was
introduced. The intent being to simplify the
code, reduce the number of areas of code which
must consider feedback, and fix a few bugs.
Provide global prelight option (see Edit ->
Preferences->Interface).
2 level structure for theme manager window,
to help with themeing ArdourButtons.
Fix transparency of selection rectangles
(and change color a bit).
Add “active” indicator/control to rows in
the editor route list.
Fix insertion of processors at the point at
which the processor menu was opened; give a
visual cue to indicate where a processor will be
inserted.
make return/enter trigger the default action
in a variety of dialogs.
Crash Fixes:
Fix crash caused by empty bundles.
Fix a crash with plugins when the processing
of a block of audio is split up (e.g. for
automation handling).
Fix crash on rename region.
Fix crash when moving end marker after
deleting loop range.
Fix crash on “Consolidate Range” on MIDI
tracks.
Other Bug fixes:
Fix note snapping so that we snap to the
note we’re over.
Fix various MIDI keybindings that were lost
previously in a regression.
Setup fader for audio/MIDI when its position
in the processing chain is altered.
Reconfigure processing chain appropriately
when setting up a peak meter.
Update fader curves when xfade length
changes.
Fix thinko bug with dragging one of the >1
tabs in the same route group.
Stop session range location being removed on
clear-ranges.
Do not move the initial tempo / meter
changes at 0 time when inserting time.
Snap new automation points in
AutomationRegionViews.
Don’t create new regions on clicks on MIDI
plugin automation tracks.
Set up ControlUI::combo_map correctly to fix
drop-down boxes in generated plugin UIs (#4221).
Based on work by jeremybub.
Delete RouteUI immediately on request,
rather than in an idle loop.
Don’t allow non-movable meter / tempo
markers to be dragged.
Don’t draw MIDI note horizontal grid lines
if they would be less than 3 pixels apart.
Load the tempo map before the locations so
that locations can compute their BBT positions
correctly.
Clear clicks on locating for a seamless loop
so that they don’t stop.
Fix default disk_io_chunk_frames for
diskstream so that it isn’t larger than the
default playback buffer size.
Make it possible for undo records to contain
details for crossfades that are later deleted.
Fix adding of automation points to regions
with a non-zero start.
Hide/ignore inputs on a plugin if the
previous processing element doesn’t provide any
data for them.
Make management of MIDI ports thread-safe.
Various fixes to Mackie/Logic Control
support.
Fix a search/replace bug in TOC/CUE
generation.
Fix problems with selecting control points
in AutomationRegionViews with non-zero region
start.
fix ghost note position on non-zero-start
regions.
Remove erroneous check that would prevent
notes being put at pitch 0 or 127.
Clear selected MIDI notes in all regions
when they are cleared in a single one.
Stop MIDIRegionView claiming
PrimaryModifier-scrollwheel so that zoom still
works when MIDI notes are selected.
Make phone-home option default to False even
for non-debug builds.
Fix visibility of MIDI CC automation lanes.
New Emu Xboard 61 binding map from mcgruff.
Patch from colinf to disallow colons in
snapshot names for compatibility with FAT
filesystems.
Adjust send faders depending on what signal
type they are passing.
Make MIDI sends work.
Improve plugin hide logic to prevent crashes
when trying to insert fully audio plugins into
MIDI tracks.
Save marker selection state in instant.xml.
Fix crossfade construction.
More robust plugin I/O mapping.
Cope with drags of selections that include
regions on hidden tracks.
Fix check on dragging MIDI notes to a point
before the region position.
Fix snap of note drags when the region
position is not itself snapped to the grid.
Allow status bar components to be
individually shown / hidden.
Don’t offer the monitor buss to export from.
Don’t resort routes at every step during a
session’s construction; can dramatically speed
up loading of big sessions.
Use shared_ptr for Port in the AudioEngine;
improves thread-safety of the audio engine’s
port list as a writer cannot destroy a port in
one thread while the port list is being iterated
in another.
Reload meters in the right place even if
they are set to a custom position.
Fix left-over Panner and related objects
after session close.
Change internal API used by native VST
support to read/write info files, so that users
can generate.fsi files in ~/.fst if is not
writeable by them.
Fix compensation of roll delay with MIDI
tracks; data should be obtained from
playback_sample, not transport_frame.
Reverse the order of vertical tabs when they
are on the right hand side so that from top to
bottom it is the same order as that from left to
right for the top tabs.
Fix bleed of signals between tracks/busses
caused by disabled plugins.
Allocate some thread-local buffers for the
GUI thread so that the Plugin analysis stuff
works again.
Make it impossible to create MIDI tape
tracks.
Do a topological sort of the route list
before passing it to the graph, as the graph’s
feedback detection algorithm depends on the
input route list being sorted in such a way.
Fix naming / numbering of new MIDI tracks.
Attempt to fix some confusions caused by
bundles containing different types of ports.
Fix master bus mute button.
Use home-grown solution for path_expand(),
rather than wordexp() which is broken in
different ways on different platforms.
Fix nasty off by one error that lead to the
creation of 1 sample xfades where there should
be none.
Fix incorrect buffer status reports when
using MIDI tracks.
Find export presets correctly.
Open route group dialogue on
Ctrl-right-click rather than Ctrl-left-click on
a group tab to be more consistent with the rest
of Ardour.
Save custom meter position so that it can be
restored if the metering point is set to
something else and then back to custom again.
Build Changes:
Don’t build tranzport support unless it was
asked for (it doesn’t work anyway).
Remove LV2 support via SLV2 (Lilv only now).
Comment out soundtouch-related configuration
checks.
Translations:
Updated Italian translation from Raffaele
Morelli.
Updated Russian translation from Alexandre
Prokoudine.
New Norwegian translation from Eivind
Ødegård.
Ardour is a free
(open source) digital audio workstation. You can use
it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio.
Produce your own CDs. Mix video soundtracks.
Experiment with new ideas about music and sound.
Generate sound installations for 12 speaker gallery
shows. Have Fun.