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Ardour 8.0 released
October 8th 2023
Ardour 8.0 is available now for Linux, Windows, and macOS, including
the latest release of macOS, Sonoma. Along with the usual set of
important and not-so-important bug fixes, Ardour 8.0 brings users
substantial quality of life benefits:
* "Quick groups" - most mix-related controls now operate on all the
selected tracks & busses
* Manage sections of a song with arrangement markers. Define your
verses, chorus, and bridge. Then rearrange or copy them as you
wish.
* Create persistent region groups in the editor window, to make
multi-region editing easier.
* Edit velocity easily on a dedicated automation lane whether it's
a single note or a chord.
* Draw automation freely for any controller or press Control
(Command) key to enable line-drawing mode. You can also combine
free and line segments as you draw just by pressing and releasing
the Ctrl/Cmd key.
* Fit the tempo map to a human performance, with a new dedicated
tool.
* If (e.g. drum) note names are available for a plugin instrument
or external device (via a MIDNAM file), see those names in the
all-new MIDI track header.
* Use Novation Launchpad Pro in DAW/Session mode (along with the
standalone Sequencer, Note and Chord modes).
* Create new interesting progressions with arpeggiator plugins.
Note that there are no changes to Ardour's session file format with
this release, so sessions created with previous versions,
particularly those from the 7.x release series, should load with no
new issues. If you opt to have Ardour copy over your configuration
from 7.x, we will copy more files too, because of the lack of
compatibility issues.
Some people will no doubt laugh at a few of these "new features",
given that they've been in some other DAWs for 20 years or more.
That's OK -- we laugh too when we see other DAWs finally adding things
that Ardour could do in 2005.
a screenshot showing Ardour 8.0
Download
New Features
Lollipops for MIDI Velocity
a screenshot showning the new MIDI velocity lollipops in Ardour 8.0
Ardour has offered several different workflows for adjusting MIDI
note velocities, some of them much more convenient in many situations
than the traditional "lollipops" (vertical bars with a dot on top
used to alter the note velocity). However, there are some specific
situations, particularly crescendos and diminuendos, where the
ability to just draw a line to get rising or falling velocity is much
better than working note by note. So, for Ardour 8.0 we have, after
many user requests over a long time period, added the traditional
velocity lollipop editing interface.
Arrangement
Need the ability to "arrange" a composition by easily moving and/or
copying sections ? Ardour 8 brings a dedicated ruler to define those
sections, and a sidebar which allows you to copy or reorder them as
you wish. Long time audio editors will note this means that Ardour
now supports 3-point edits: a given range (start, end) can be moved
or copied to a destination point in time.
New MIDI Track Piano Roll Header
Thanks to the vision of user/contributor Alexander Mitchell, Ardour 8
comes with a completely redesigned MIDI track header piano roll and
scroomer. Changes include:
* All notes reach the right edge of the piano roll
* Octave numbers (C3, C4 etc) are shown at all times
* Note names can be displayed in the scroomer. If MIDNAM data is
available to provide meaningful names they will be used. If not,
generic MIDI note numbers and 12TET names will be shown. Note
names will only be shown in draw/internal edit mode, and can be
controlled by user preference allowing "always", "never" and
"when available" (the latter referring to MIDNAM note name data
being available).
* It is now possible to record MIDI using the piano roll.
* Possibly more obvious user-interaction design for the scroomer
("scroll" + "zoom").
MIDNAM is an industry standard to provide "names" for various things
related to MIDI. Unlike some other DAWs, we have chosen to use this
standard for note naming rather than devising our own format for this
information.
Launchpad Pro support
a photograph of a Novation Launchpad Pro Mk3
The Novation Launchpad Pro is an affordable, powerful pad/grid device
for controlling Ardour (it also works with at least one other DAW).
Ardour 8 features full support for just about every feature of the LP
Pro's "Session" mode, like Ableton Live. You can use it to trigger
clips and cues, but also control gain levels, panning and send levels
for tracks & busses. The fader design is quite something to see (be
sure to read the LP Pro manual about how they work).
One interesting thing to note: unlike the Ableton Push 2, the LP Pro
actually has "brains". Besides "Session" mode (which is controlled by
the DAW), there are 3 other modes you can use: "Note", "Chord" and
"Sequencer" all of which function without any involvement by the DAW.
The LP Pro has its own fairly sophisticated MIDI recorder/sequencer,
and the Chord mode can be used to build up progressions in an easy to
perform way. The modes work with Ardour just as they would in any
other DAW, and you can find fairly good documentation on them in the
LP Pro manual. There's a particularly thorough playlist of video
tutorials on the Sequencer mode.
We hope to announce support for the LP Pro's junior cousins, the LP
Mini and LP X, in the not too distant future.
Quick Groups
For a long time, Ardour has had track & bus groups which could be set
to share features like solo state, record-enable and so on. There are
also VCAs to provide a different type of shared control. These were
(and are!) powerful, but many users have expressed a desire for more
spontaneous "group operations", particularly in the mixer.
For Ardour 8.0, we have redesigned this fundamental behavior of many
controls so that they now apply most changes to all selected tracks &
busses. This includes: gain (fader) and input trim changes as well as
solo/mute/rec-enable/solo-safe/solo-isolate/monitoring controls.
Of course, if you have a group with the selection sharing property
enabled, selecting a member of the group will select all of them, and
then the "operate on selection" model will apply to the group.
The new design allows a lot more flexibility. You can:
* not use groups at all, just select the tracks/busses/mixer
strips.
* use groups but leave selection sharing enabled so that grouping &
selection "look" the same (i.e. selecting 1 member of the group
selects all.
* use groups but leave selection sharing disabled, allowing you to
still select specific members of the group (and non-members) to
operate on.
Note that these changes will also apply to the editor tab/window, for
whatever relevant controls are visible there.
Two small notes on this: first, this behavior will not happen when
the changes to various controls come from a hardware control surface.
This may or may not change in the future - hardware control surfaces
tend to have different conventions for use than mouse-driven GUIs.
Second, this also will not work if you use the mouse scroll wheel to
adjust faders. We will likely "fix" this sometime during the 8.x
series.
Region Grouping
Another long standing user request has been the ability to select
several regions and "group" them so that they will all move or trim
together. Ardour 8.0 now allows this: select more than 1 region, then
right click on any of them, and select "Group" from the context menu
(or simply press Ctrl-g (Cmd-g on macOS).
Regions recorded at the same time are grouped by default so they can
be edited together.
Freehand automation drawing
Ardour has for decades supported sample-accurate automation with both
manual entry of control points and full automation recording.
However, more than a few users have asked for the ability to use the
mouse/touchpad to "draw" freehand lines rather than create them point
by point.
Ardour 8.0 adds this style of automation drawing for any/all
automations, including regular parameters, but also for per-region
gain and finally MIDI CC data.
The old (and still available) point-by-point automation drawing style
is recommended for many things, due to reduced CPU load and less
issues with plugins.
The new freehand drawing style is sometimes faster to draw and may
feel more natural to some users. Remember, however, that Ardour can
interpolate between points, and most plugins will always interpolate
changes in parameter values, so although this may "look" nicer, it's
not necessarily any better at providing the automation "shape" you
think you want.
Tempo Mapping, Round 2 -- the Grid Tool
If you compose/work entirely "in the box" and/or always work with a
click track or visual grid as a reference, most DAWs (including
Ardour) will help you get things lined up, even you're leaning into
Dillah-style grooves.
But if you are dealing with recordings of human performances, you're
likely to find that no fixed grid can help you with the little speed
ups and slow downs that give a lot of music its distinct feeling.
We've looked at the solutions offered by a bunch of other DAWs and
found them all lacking. If you try to automate the task of adjusting
the tempo to follow a human performance (e.g. by tracking transients/
onsets), you invariably end up with a mess that you still need to
manually fix up.
With Ardour 8.0, we are proud to offer an approach to this problem
that we think combines the best of both worlds: switch to the Grid
tool (shortcut: "y") and simply drag the grid (lines) to fit the
measure and beat onsets that you feel while listening. Start by
working from the left/earlier to the right/later, and then head back
and tweak any specific beat lines that don't seem quite right.
While this won't be useful to four-on-the-floor techno producers, for
those working with human performances not tied to a click track, the
result is a tempo map (and grid) that precisely follows the human,
making it easy to align other material and/or generate new (MIDI)
tracks that also follow the performance.
The combination of Ardour's functionality and your listening ability
also allows you to respect particularly slack timing done for musical
effect. Maybe the transients for the down beat of a given measure are
not "on beat", but you can sense that and leave the tempo/pulse
alone. The resulting grid accommodates the way people actually
perform, rather than how software sometimes thinks they ought to.
Notarization for macOS
message from macOS about a damaged application crossed out with red
line because this will not happen any more
For several years, people downloading Ardour for macOS have had to
deal with various kinds of messages (from Apple) saying things like
"This program comes from an untrusted source" to "The file is
damaged". As of Ardour 8, macOS users downloading Ardour won't see
this stuff any more, because we have given up and paid $100 to join
Apple's pay-to-play scheme. Our builds are all notarized now, and so
people on macOS should have the same smooth experience they get from
other macOS software downloads.
MIDI Arpeggiator Plugins
Thanks to Dr. Albert Graf, Ardour now comes with three MIDI
arpeggiator plugins, which are intended to be added to a MIDI track
before the instrument plugin. All 3 arpeggiators come with a number
of factory presets which demonstrate their use. Dr. Graf also
provides a more detailed description.
The default Arpeggiator is a traditional monophonic arpeggiator which
takes chords as MIDI input and turns them into arpeggios when
transport is rolling. The arpeggiator is sample accurate, follows the
tempo map and offers various controls to let you modify parameters
such as velocities, octave range, and pattern mode.
The Barlow Arp (after Clarence Barlow) automatically utilizes the
current time signature and division to produce rhythmic accents in
accordance with the meter by varying the note velocities in a given
range.
Last but not least, the Raptor: The Random Arpeggiator is an advanced
arpeggiator with random note generation, harmonic controls, input
pitch and velocity tracking, as well as automatic modulation of
various parameters. Raptor has many more parameters than the other
two plugins and is thus more difficult to use, but can also produce
much more varied output.
Improvements and Bug Fixes
* Disable translation by default on Windows & macOS. Too many new
users have issues with translations, including crashes.
Translation is still available on these platforms, you just need
to enable it in Ardour's preference dialog.
* Auto connect metronome when using an audio interface for the
first time.
* Fix many off-by-one-pixel drawing errors.
* Fix MIDI capture/playback alignment issues on macOS.
* ALSA: disambiguate multiple soundcards with the same name.
* Provide rubber-band drag select of region gain points.
* Lua: allow tracking editor selection.
* Fix semi-random crash when removing a track/bus.
* Improve performance of calculating tempo-map based grids.
* Many fixes and improvements for BBT markers.
* Keep MIDI data in position during tempo mapping.
* Choice to use audio time (samples) or music time (bars & beats)
now shared between a session & all markers it that session. (can
be chosen in session properties dialog, in the Miscellaneous
section there). This choice also affects which rulers are shown
by default (though you can change that for a given session and
your choice will be remembered.
* Add workaround for blank audio/MIDI setup dialog on some XWayland
systems (Linux).
* Fix location/marker rippling when cutting locations.
* Fix height of tempo ruler curve elements.
* Clicking on any sort of marker now offers configurable behavior,
including locating to that position.
* Clips velocity sensitivity control now operational for external
MIDI hardware used to launch.
* Allow playhead to be optionally included as a snap target.
* Fix long-standing subtle issues with the JACK audio/MIDI backend.
* Fixed bug where undo operation could delete plugins.
* Fix build script to work with Python 3.12.
MIDI Related
* Fix playback of MIDI notes which start at current playhead
position.
* Fix potential loss of MIDI playback caused by automation and
transport events.
* Quantization swing fixed.
* Swing amount now varies from 0 (no swing) through 100 (triplet
swing), 150 (hard swing), 200 (sextuplet swing) to 300 (maximum
swing).
* Set length of "percussive mode" drawn MIDI notes to 1 tick, which
prevents any accidental overlap.
* Fix MIDI SMF track splitting (which could previously result in a
corrupt session).
* Recording from MIDI track header piano roll now works.
Plugin Related
* Add ACE Stereo Routing plugin.
* VST3: work around crash in UAD plugins when using mono
configurations.
* Reduce the number of plugin-related calls to TempoMap::get_grid
().
* Lua processors can now come with factory presets.
* Fix sample rate of plugins when loading a 2nd (or 3rd...)
session.
* Correctly compute tempo passed to LV2 plugins.
Control Surfaces and Devices
* Console 1 support now allows navigation and editing of plugin
parameters.
* MIDI binding map for the Devine Versakey.
* MIDI binding map for the Donner StarryPad drum pad controller.
* MIDI binding map for AKAI MPC Mini (mk1 & mk2) and MPK miniplus.
* MIDNAM file for Kurzweil SP4.
Removals
There comes a point in all long-lived software where the best thing
for users and developers is the removal of certain functionality that
was either ill-conceived or poorly implemented. Ardour 8.0 is no
different, and features these removals:
* Remove option to hide or deactivate tempo map markers. The
potential for confusion or even madness from this option became
clear, and we opted for sanity.
* Remove option to "glue to bars & beats".
For the time being, MIDI regions and data always use musical time
(bars, beats) for their position and length. Audio tracks and
regions use audio time (samples) for their position and length.
Location markers and named ranges use the session default time
domain (music or audio) and will follow that setting if you
change it.
* Remove the essentially useless "Audition tool". Use the audition
action instead (bound to "a"), which also handles multiple
selected regions properly).
* Remove attempt at scrub-dragging (sort of like a tape machine).
This never worked well, and just isn't relevant to a generation
raised without much exposure to "rockin' the reels"
Contributors
Albert Graf, Alexander Mitchell, Asahi Lina, Ben Loftis, Devine
Versakey, Hoger Dehnhardt, Hyeok Kim, John Emmas, Maciej Blizinski,
Mads Kiilerich, Paul Davis, Renato Luiz de Freitas Cunha, Robin
Gareus, Violet Purcell, Dominik Martinez
Translators
* Alexandre Prokoudine (Russian)
* Edgar Aichinger (German)
* Julien Taverna (French)
* JungHee Lee (Korean)
* Martin Vlk (Czech)
* Krzysztof Gajdemski (Polish)
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