Ardour

Ardour 6.8 released

Ardour 6.8 is now available. We previously announced that 6.7 would be the final release for older platforms, but in the weeks since then we've accumulated several important bug fixes and a couple of new features. We felt better with a final "old system" release in the best possible shape it could be, and so ... here we are.

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This release continues to include official builds for Apple M1 systems. They are not a part of the regular download system, but can be found on the nightly builds site.

Release notes for other older versions are linked in the list below.

New Features
  • Playlist Operations (sponsored by Harrison Consoles)

    A new menu Track > Playlist, provides actions to create new playlists (or a copied playlist) for (all | rec-armed | selected) tracks.

    Playlist naming and grouping behavior has changed:

    • When creating a new playlist, the user is always prompted for a playlist name (default value is Take.N where N auto-increments). In the past, some playlist actions didn't prompt for a name while others did, resulting in inconsistent naming.
    • When a playlist is created, ardour assigns it a group-id (timestamp) which can later be used to recognize playlists that were created as part of the same action. In the past, ardour tried to match grouped playlists via name but this relationship was unclear to the user.
    • A playlist group-id is also implicitly created when you first record to an empty playlist. This solves the problem in the past where user-created playlists would select together as a group, but the initial track playlist had no group relationship and therefore could not follow the group selection.

    The dialog accessed via the "P" button in the track header (editor view) has been adjusted: some esoteric playlist functions (copy from other track, share from other track, and steal from other track) are now hidden under an "Advanced" submenu. You can now also show more than one track's "Select Playlist" dialog simultaneously, the dialog is persistent rather than closing when you make a selection: this makes it easier to audition playlists ("takes") and copy from one to another

  • Performance Meters: Window > Performance Meters now provides low level metering of the "DSP" taking place inside Ardour. Notice that the numbers display in the window are worst case which may not match the behavior of some other measurement tools (e.g. the main "DSP meter" in the upper right of the main window) or other DAWs. Average values (along with std. deviation values) can be seen by mousing-over any given meter. Thanks to Robbert van der Helm for his participation in the development process for these meters.
  • Add support for requesting specific CPU DMA latency values (can improve DSP performance on some systems, and degrade it or have no impact on other systems). If you don't understand what this does, then it's probably best to leave it alone.
  • Add extend-selection (to end of region) and invert-selection operations for MIDI editing
  • New track edit operation "remove gaps", with adjustable threshold and "leave" parameters
  • Add M4A import support
  • MIDI Tracer windows now come with their own port for arbitrary tracing of MIDI data

Improvements
  • Add bypass control to ACE-Fluidsynth
  • Add a MIDNAM file for Yamaha P-121/125 keyboards
  • Do not trigger ruler display when changing between BBT subdivisions for the grid
  • Crash fixes and speed improvements to ProTools session import
  • Allow renaming of region/source cue markers
  • Allow drag of region/source cue markers
  • Alternative region/source cue marker promotion to CD markers
  • Stop using named semaphores on system wide to avoid collisions with other software
  • Ignore xruns when when switching to/from non-realtime export
  • Remove duplicates in CoreAudio device list
  • Refactoring of input port monitoring (significantly reduces DSP load caused by new recorder tab)
  • Improvements to setting real-time priority for critical threads
  • Better event loop integration for websocket support
  • Automation control points no longer obey "lock edit" mode, which should only lock regions and notes
  • Slip-contents drag made more accessible
  • Some improvements to behavior of brush dragging
  • Override global Ubuntu menu behavior
  • Improvements to splash window visibility management during startup

Bug Fixes
  • Fix memory leak in clock displays (up to 50MB/hour when rolling)
  • Fix undo/redo of ripple edits
  • Fix disappearance of regions and sources from lists in the Editor
  • Fix behavior of "transport-play" operation from control surfaces
  • Fix crash during MIDI bounce with processing
  • Fixes for hangups during multiple timespan export
  • Fix crash when removing a plugin with a control mapped using MIDI learn or a binding map
  • Fix crash when using external position sync (MTC, LTC etc) and switching backends
  • Fix deadlock in long running sessions (2-5 days)

Translation Updates
  • Basque.
  • Czech.
  • Russian.
  • German.

Contributors

Ben Loftis, David Robillard, Len Ovens, Paul Davis, Robin Gareus, Todd Naugle, Damien Zammit, Desidiosus, Hubert Figuière, Luciano Iam, Marijn Kruisselbrink, Nikolaus Gullotta

Translators

Porrumentzio (Basque), Edgar Aichinger (German), pafri (Czech), Alexandre Prokoudine (Russian)

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