9 ms·

Ardour 7.0

265 points by frankzander 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I'm Ardour's original developer and I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have about the release.
- carlosbaraza 4y ago
  Thank you Paul, the story of Ardour is really inspiring. Have you looked into potentially porting it to WASM and running in the browser? Is there a Figma for audio already?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Not seriously. Running this sort of thing in a browser has become more and more feasible, but I still consider it fundamentally a broken idea. Even if the browser environment started to offer sufficient low level OS interaction (e.g. setting relative real time thread priorities, using SIMD correctly for metering and gain control, and lots more), I can only really see one reason to want to do this: ease of "delivery" of the software to the user. Porting the 80+ libraries we use to wasm is no laughing matter, and it would be even harder to run plugins, since each of them would have to be ported by their respective developers (in the case of proprietary plugins. A browser based version that could not run Kontakt or Valhalla Shimmer would be a significant step backwards for most serious users. However, you can already run Cardinal (the FLOSS-ier fork of VCV Rack) in the browser, so at this point it's anyone's guess where this idea might lead us.
    - carlosbaraza 4y ago
      That makes sense, cause it's true that the audio world -compared to design- is really plugin heavy. However, VSTs are mostly used by real pro users and the distribution the browser offers is not to be dismissed easily. Amateurs could get away with a few good plugins. When they are ready to make the transition, a native app or extension could be installed. But it would open an interesting door to quick editing something online, and even collaboration if integrated.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        1. "VST" is often used as a synonym for plugins, but it absolutely is not. It's one particular plugin API/format. 2. If you're doing in-the-box composition, every sound you work with probably comes from a plugin. So the idea the plugins are mostly used only by pros is not really true. Synth choice is a hot topic and highly subjective issue, I don't think people would want to be heavily constrained there. 3. "quick editing" is already available online. Not much point with us trying to compete with that.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Does it interact with pipewire any? Or prefers existing apis like jack?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    No native Pipewire API support and none planned. On Linux, there are audio/MIDI backends for ALSA and JACK. Pipewire mostly supports the JACK API (and likely will do so completely in the near future). [EDIT: if you can work with playback only (e.g. during editing or mixing), we also have a PulseAudio backend on Linux that will (like JACK) also talk to PipeWire. ]
  - atoav 4y ago
    Not an ardour user but I have a good time intergratimg everything with pipewire just by running it with the pw_jack command.
- stelcodes 4y ago
  Hi Paul, just wanted to say thanks for working so hard on Ardour. I just started playing with Ardour in Fedora on my Framework laptop, but I've been thinking about buying a M1 mac to make music because I miss Logic and Ableton. These release notes have got me hyped because now I might not want to! I'm very excited to try out the clips and freesound features. I'll definitely be buying a license soon. You (and the rest of the brilliant Ardour contributors) seriously rock!
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Thank you. Just to be clear about one thing: nobody buys a license for Ardour, it is released under the GPL. You can choose to pay us for the service of building it for you, or if you like, providing a ready-to-run version that we can actually support. That revenue allows myself and other Ardour contributors to work on Ardour as a way of making a living.
    - makapuf 4y ago
      Thanks also, I had the privilege to exchange with you on the linux-audio-dev mailing list a few times way back in the time of quasimodo and creation of LADSPA, I learned so much thanks to your dedication and knowledge about audio programming and how to create an useful api !
- yupis 4y ago
  Can I use to make a Dj mix?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    You'd have to explain what "a DJ mix" means to you before I could answer that.
    - nxpnsv 4y ago
      That said, it certainly is possible to make _a_ DJ mix with Ardour...
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        It's all gone Pete Tong.
- slim 4y ago
  Ardour was impressive since the first time I opened it. Thank you for making such high quality software for linux. what was your motivation to start this project? how do you use ardour yourself? do you have any music to share ?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Ardour history (also posted downthread): https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333 https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333 I don't use Ardour much myself. When I make music, I mostly use the amazing VCV Rack or its slightly-more-FLOSS fork, Cardinal As for music, not really but last December I did release this: https://pauldavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/suspended-generations https://pauldavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/suspended-generati...
    - stoicjumbotron 4y ago
      That is soo soothing to hear Is that also made using Cardinal? Can the same be achieved using VCV Rack?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        That was made using Rack 1. You could use Rack 2 or Cardinal to do the same thing, though some of the modules I used for those pieces are not available for one or both of Rack 2 and Cardinal. But that should never limit you - even Cardinal has more than 800 modules.
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  Have you made any money from it?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Ardour revenue is about US$180k/yr at present. I make a reasonable middle-class income from it, help support another full time developer, and put aside any surplus to help pay other people associated with the project (e.g. website, documentation).
    - zerr 4y ago
      Can you share subscriptions vs single payments rough percentages?
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        Roughly speaking, about 95%+ subscriptions.
- xyproto 4y ago
  Thanks for making Ardour! When will it be upgraded from GTK2 (which reached its end of life two years ago) to GTK3 or GTK4, and are there any plans of supporting SDL2 instead, to ensure stability and portability over time?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    There are zero plans to port to SDL2. There are zero plans to ever move to GTK3 or GTK4 or GTKN. There are dreams & aspirations to drop our use of GTK and fall back on GDK (just a window & event abstraction), but this is not on any timetable because it means reimplementing text-entry, menus, tree/list views and the file browser.
    - CameronNemo 4y ago
      By "zero plans" do you mean you have evaluated them and decided they are incompatible with Ardour's goals, or just that there is nothing in the pipe or on the roadmap to do the port? One major feature that gtk3+ (or SDL2) brings is Wayland compatibility.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        Porting a 600k line codebase to a different GUI is a fool's game (the vast majority of Ardour's code and complexity is in the GUI, not the backend). We did it once before, from GTK1 to GTK2, which should have been easy. And indeed, the actual GUI toolkit switchover was relatively easy. The problem is that along the way, you keep running into other issues and ideas. We likely could have done GTK1 to GTK2 in a month, but it took nearly a year. We have no need of traditional desktop GUI toolkits (or SDL) except for the 4 widget classes I mentioned. We have our own internal canvas-based "toolkit" that is Cairo-based, and thus only requires a window+rgba-buffer+event abstraction.
- foxhill 4y ago
  i’m a long time cubendo user. i’ve tried to switch to ardour a couple of times (although perhaps lacking in sustained effort), but i can’t ever quite seem to get the same productivity in my workflows - e.g. multi-track slip editing for a whole drum track recording, sidechaining effects, and routing (a non-exhaustive list). this is most likely a time/experience issue, to be fair. what tips would you give me for making ardour feel a bit more familiar? i understand that’s a very vague question, and a vague response would be justified :)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    It's not something I think I can usefully address in HN comments, but please free free to join us on our forums at discourse.ardour.org or IRC at #ardour on libera.chat and we'll be happy to listen to your workflow and make some suggestions (which you're free to ignore, of course).
- stevefolta 4y ago
  It’s not a question about this release, I guess, but are there any plans to support CLAP?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    We do plan to do so, but it's not a high priority for us at this point. A more urgent plugin-related task is an internal redesign to be able to handle multi-output-bus VST3 plugins. Unfortunately, Steinberg used a totally different model for this than Apple's AudioUnits (which was the basis for the existing design in Ardour), and some rather severe changes are required to get VST3 plugins that do this to work. CLAP doesn't really much for an Ardour user that isn't already addressed by LV2 or VST3, so although we do want to support it, it's not really on any critical path (other than wanting to support the general move to a not-owned-by-one-company plugin API).
stefanos82 4y ago
What is the original story behind Ardour's creation? What motivated you writing such complicated application? P.S.: I have the GUI layout and I don't care what people say about GTK!
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  I wanted a DAW to record my own fledging attempts at electronic music. I took a vow in the 80s to never use Windows, Apple systems seemed overpriced, and I had years of *nix experience, including a bit of Linux. In the late 90s there was a Linux app called "Multitrack" which seemed capable on the surface, but it turned out not to be. I called Digidesign to ask them if I could port ProTools to Linux for them (for free), and they laughed. So I thought "how hard could it be to just write my own?" ... 22+ years later, here I am. A longer version is here: https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333 https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333
  - meatsock 4y ago
    > my own fledging attempts at electronic music. i'd like to hear more about that.
  - protomikron 4y ago
    That's a cool story. Ardour is awesome and shows that specialized niche software can compete or even out-compete commercial proprietary software (like QGIS in the GIS space). I hope it will be around for a long time and it's a nice piece of software, thx Paul.
- frankzander 4y ago
  you might find this interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndTAbjPqm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndTAbjPqm0 - I think Paul talks a bit about the background of Ardour and it's history
- stefanos82 4y ago
  Thank you for your reply, that's quite an interesting story! Don't ask me why my fingers typed "have" instead of "love" lol, I have no idea! O.o
smoldesu 4y ago
Holy cow, a nice-looking clip based workflow! The other day I bought Bitwig because I was looking for this exact thing on Linux. I don't regret it one bit, but it's amazing to see the beginnings of an open source solution to this! Hats off to the contributors who pulled through and made this happen.
- gavinray 4y ago
  If you're interested, there's a $20 plugin for REAPER that introduces a fantastic clip-launcher workflow, complete with MIDI controller integration/remote controls. https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/ https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/
  - smallerfish 4y ago
    Playtime doesn't support linux though, does it?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    That looks awesome, I'd be interested in giving it a whirl once they add Linux support! Currently I'm sticking with Bitwig for the excellent DrivenByMoss Push1 integration, but eventually I'd like to give Reaper a try (since it has the same Push1 plugins).
  - bambax 4y ago
    Didn't know about that, thank you! (Their terminology is confusing though: a "VST" that only works in Reaper is a Reaper plugin, not a VST proper...?) But anyway, will try it!
    - squeaky-clean 4y ago
      Reaper has it's own specific plugin format and language, JSFX (no relation to javascript), so that's probably why they specify it uses the VST format. But also relies on Reaper specific APIs making it only work in Reaper.
gavinray 4y ago
This is incredible, massive bunch of features! Congrats on shipping
beardyw 4y ago
I installed a copy of Ubuntu Studio on a spare machine a couple of years ago. I had come from Windows and Reaper and was used to one app where everything was controlled by the app. I was relatively new to Linux but kind of new my way around. But I found the principal of separate applications talking to each other a compelling idea, but in practice totally frustrating! I had VSTs I wanted to use and I got some to work though I don't remember how, but many synths just wanted to act alone via communication. Has anyone done anything to make all that less of a headache? Or was I doing it wrong? Not suggesting this is any fault of Ardour's.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Plugins on Linux work just the same way they do on macOS and Windows. But yes, it is true that to some extent, there was a tradition from the late 90s to the 20-teens to create synths as standalone apps for Linux, connected via JACK. That is really going away now, and you can run U-he synths, Helm, Vitalium, Serge and many others as plugins just like you do on macOS and Windows.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  I've used LinVST in the past to run Windows VSTs on Linux with mixed success, but it was more of a hit and miss; today I'm extremely happy with Yabridge which is a lot more polished, doesn't crap out at every WINE update and also is much quicker to operate. https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge
- rigonkulous 4y ago
  Exactly opposite situation in my case - my Ubuntu Studio rig has been rock solid for tracking and many projects .. but the good news is that even if, for whatever reason, you can't qite grok things to be as productive as a pro Ubuntu Studio user (hint: you can) we have all the good things happening in ZynthianOS to explore, anyway - and this just wraps up the same essential goodies into a hardware device that is push-button-user friendly: http://zynthian.org http://zynthian.org And of course there are bleeding edge lessons learned, applied in things like monome, etc.
NexRebular 4y ago
How's the latency situation nowadays on FreeBSD?
armitron 4y ago
I've looked at Ardour in the past but GTK put me off from investing serious time into it. Now that there is REAPER, I have to ask, what does Ardour do better and why would one pick Ardour over REAPER?
- adamnemecek 4y ago
  It’s open source.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Reaper is a fine DAW, and there are many fine DAWs. For the most part, which DAW is better for a given user depends a great deal on their prior experience, specific expectations and likely workflow. Neither Ardour nor REAPER are "better" than the other - they are different, and some people will love one and hate the other. More typically, some people will find a particular workflow that they use cumbersome in one of the DAWs and easier in another. If you'd like, you can listen to myself (lead dev of Ardour) spend 2.5hrs chatting with Justin Frankel (lead dev of Reaper). It won't do much to answer your specific question, but might reveal that the similarities in our development processes and history and goals are much broader than you might expect: http://adc.equalarea.com/2022/02/07/adc1/ http://adc.equalarea.com/2022/02/07/adc1/ If you're a user of Ardour, why would our choice of GUI toolkit have much impact on your use of the program?
  - armitron 4y ago
    I appreciate the time you took in crafting this response, I will listen to the conversation that you linked. Regarding GTK, I could never stomach the specific "feel" that it has, and it's also been incredibly buggy for me on platforms other than Linux, and I use macOS and Windows a lot too. I haven't found a single GTK app that I can tolerate using on Windows or macOS so far. I find QT a lot better in that regard. I was a heavy user of Inkscape (GTK) back when there were no free alternatives, but when Krita (QT) matured I switched to it and never looked back.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
dang 4y ago
Related: Ardour -Audacity Alternative to Record, Edit, and Mix on Linux, OS X and Windows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740936 - July 2021 (55 comments) Paul Davis, lead developer of Ardour on fixing big Linux audio issues - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739517 - July 2020 (41 comments) Ardour 5.9 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347758 - May 2017 (46 comments) Ardour 5 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281137 - Aug 2016 (64 comments) Ardour 4.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9403131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9403131 - April 2015 (1 comment)
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Note that I only started reading HN in 2019, which is why you won't any info from me in earlier items.
wanderingmind 4y ago
As someone who recently started dabbling in this area, can someone explain how Arduor is different from Audacity in its features. I know the telemetry issue in Audacity, I'm interested to understand feature differences and ease of usage.
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  My personal experience is that I installed Audacity and it was a good application for recording and editing sound. I installed Ardour and spent a couple of hours trying to get Jack to work or something like that and gave up.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Ardour does not require JACK and has not for many years. Unfortunately the internet is riddled with out-of-date and inaccurate information which makes many people believe that it does.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Audacity is a lot simpler from what I can tell. It is meant to record and edit audio without doing anything fancy. Ardour on the other hand has lots of additional functionality, such as a fully featured mixer with plug in support and the recently added clip launcher. There is probably a lot more to say, but if you are serious about making music, definitely choose Ardour. If you just want to record something quick, or something simple like a voice recording, Audacity can get the job done.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Audacity is primarily an audo file editor: you load (or record) a file into it, carry out destructive edits (i.e. the data on disk is modified), and then save the result. Ardour is a digital audio workstation, which mostly implies that it is a non-destructive, non-linear system. Edits in Ardour do not change any of the media data on disk (everything is done with meta-data). Ardour is designed to handle track counts that Audacity could not dream of (100+), does realtime FX processing (coming to Audacity in the next version) rather than having to process the data and write a new file on disk, and is generally much more capable for handling multi-track audio. Each one has its place. If you are really just editing an audio file, Audacity is likely to have less of a learning curve. If you involved in music creation or composition or recording, Ardour is much more likely to be the appropriate tool.
stelcodes 4y ago
For anyone on Fedora 36 wanting to play with Ardour 6.9.0 with some awesome free effects and synth plugins, try this: sudo dnf install ardour6 lv2-calf-plugins-gui ladspa-autotalent-plugins lsp-plugins-lv2 lv2-zam-plugins lv2-synthv1 lv2-amsynth-plugin All the plugins will automatically show up in the plugin manager!
ephaeton 4y ago
I've switched from ardour to reaper after having issues with plugin latency at some point in the - now - pretty distant past (different tracks didn't time-align after the sum of plugin latencies diverged on their respective tracks). I kept my subscription for ardour, though, because I think the project is awesome. Sadly now I've grown used to another set of quirks (reaper's), so switching back seems quite unlikely. Still gonna keep that subscription running...
kuon 4y ago
I use ardour as a mixer for live streaming, it works great, but I'd love native Wayland support and some "mini mixer" GUI mode with just faders and mute status for each bus.

Ardour 7.0

265 points by frankzander 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

I'm Ardour's original developer and I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have about the release.

carlosbaraza 4y ago
Thank you Paul, the story of Ardour is really inspiring. Have you looked into potentially porting it to WASM and running in the browser? Is there a Figma for audio already?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Not seriously. Running this sort of thing in a browser has become more and more feasible, but I still consider it fundamentally a broken idea. Even if the browser environment started to offer sufficient low level OS interaction (e.g. setting relative real time thread priorities, using SIMD correctly for metering and gain control, and lots more), I can only really see one reason to want to do this: ease of "delivery" of the software to the user. Porting the 80+ libraries we use to wasm is no laughing matter, and it would be even harder to run plugins, since each of them would have to be ported by their respective developers (in the case of proprietary plugins. A browser based version that could not run Kontakt or Valhalla Shimmer would be a significant step backwards for most serious users. However, you can already run Cardinal (the FLOSS-ier fork of VCV Rack) in the browser, so at this point it's anyone's guess where this idea might lead us.
  - carlosbaraza 4y ago
    That makes sense, cause it's true that the audio world -compared to design- is really plugin heavy. However, VSTs are mostly used by real pro users and the distribution the browser offers is not to be dismissed easily. Amateurs could get away with a few good plugins. When they are ready to make the transition, a native app or extension could be installed. But it would open an interesting door to quick editing something online, and even collaboration if integrated.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      1. "VST" is often used as a synonym for plugins, but it absolutely is not. It's one particular plugin API/format. 2. If you're doing in-the-box composition, every sound you work with probably comes from a plugin. So the idea the plugins are mostly used only by pros is not really true. Synth choice is a hot topic and highly subjective issue, I don't think people would want to be heavily constrained there. 3. "quick editing" is already available online. Not much point with us trying to compete with that.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
Does it interact with pipewire any? Or prefers existing apis like jack?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  No native Pipewire API support and none planned. On Linux, there are audio/MIDI backends for ALSA and JACK. Pipewire mostly supports the JACK API (and likely will do so completely in the near future). [EDIT: if you can work with playback only (e.g. during editing or mixing), we also have a PulseAudio backend on Linux that will (like JACK) also talk to PipeWire. ]
- atoav 4y ago
  Not an ardour user but I have a good time intergratimg everything with pipewire just by running it with the pw_jack command.
stelcodes 4y ago
Hi Paul, just wanted to say thanks for working so hard on Ardour. I just started playing with Ardour in Fedora on my Framework laptop, but I've been thinking about buying a M1 mac to make music because I miss Logic and Ableton. These release notes have got me hyped because now I might not want to! I'm very excited to try out the clips and freesound features. I'll definitely be buying a license soon. You (and the rest of the brilliant Ardour contributors) seriously rock!
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Thank you. Just to be clear about one thing: nobody buys a license for Ardour, it is released under the GPL. You can choose to pay us for the service of building it for you, or if you like, providing a ready-to-run version that we can actually support. That revenue allows myself and other Ardour contributors to work on Ardour as a way of making a living.
  - makapuf 4y ago
    Thanks also, I had the privilege to exchange with you on the linux-audio-dev mailing list a few times way back in the time of quasimodo and creation of LADSPA, I learned so much thanks to your dedication and knowledge about audio programming and how to create an useful api !
yupis 4y ago
Can I use to make a Dj mix?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  You'd have to explain what "a DJ mix" means to you before I could answer that.
  - nxpnsv 4y ago
    That said, it certainly is possible to make _a_ DJ mix with Ardour...
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      It's all gone Pete Tong.
slim 4y ago
Ardour was impressive since the first time I opened it. Thank you for making such high quality software for linux. what was your motivation to start this project? how do you use ardour yourself? do you have any music to share ?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Ardour history (also posted downthread): https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333 https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333 I don't use Ardour much myself. When I make music, I mostly use the amazing VCV Rack or its slightly-more-FLOSS fork, Cardinal As for music, not really but last December I did release this: https://pauldavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/suspended-generations https://pauldavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/suspended-generati...
  - stoicjumbotron 4y ago
    That is soo soothing to hear Is that also made using Cardinal? Can the same be achieved using VCV Rack?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      That was made using Rack 1. You could use Rack 2 or Cardinal to do the same thing, though some of the modules I used for those pieces are not available for one or both of Rack 2 and Cardinal. But that should never limit you - even Cardinal has more than 800 modules.
keepquestioning 4y ago
Have you made any money from it?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Ardour revenue is about US$180k/yr at present. I make a reasonable middle-class income from it, help support another full time developer, and put aside any surplus to help pay other people associated with the project (e.g. website, documentation).
  - zerr 4y ago
    Can you share subscriptions vs single payments rough percentages?
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Roughly speaking, about 95%+ subscriptions.
xyproto 4y ago
Thanks for making Ardour! When will it be upgraded from GTK2 (which reached its end of life two years ago) to GTK3 or GTK4, and are there any plans of supporting SDL2 instead, to ensure stability and portability over time?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  There are zero plans to port to SDL2. There are zero plans to ever move to GTK3 or GTK4 or GTKN. There are dreams & aspirations to drop our use of GTK and fall back on GDK (just a window & event abstraction), but this is not on any timetable because it means reimplementing text-entry, menus, tree/list views and the file browser.
  - CameronNemo 4y ago
    By "zero plans" do you mean you have evaluated them and decided they are incompatible with Ardour's goals, or just that there is nothing in the pipe or on the roadmap to do the port? One major feature that gtk3+ (or SDL2) brings is Wayland compatibility.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Porting a 600k line codebase to a different GUI is a fool's game (the vast majority of Ardour's code and complexity is in the GUI, not the backend). We did it once before, from GTK1 to GTK2, which should have been easy. And indeed, the actual GUI toolkit switchover was relatively easy. The problem is that along the way, you keep running into other issues and ideas. We likely could have done GTK1 to GTK2 in a month, but it took nearly a year. We have no need of traditional desktop GUI toolkits (or SDL) except for the 4 widget classes I mentioned. We have our own internal canvas-based "toolkit" that is Cairo-based, and thus only requires a window+rgba-buffer+event abstraction.
foxhill 4y ago
i’m a long time cubendo user. i’ve tried to switch to ardour a couple of times (although perhaps lacking in sustained effort), but i can’t ever quite seem to get the same productivity in my workflows - e.g. multi-track slip editing for a whole drum track recording, sidechaining effects, and routing (a non-exhaustive list). this is most likely a time/experience issue, to be fair. what tips would you give me for making ardour feel a bit more familiar? i understand that’s a very vague question, and a vague response would be justified :)
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  It's not something I think I can usefully address in HN comments, but please free free to join us on our forums at discourse.ardour.org or IRC at #ardour on libera.chat and we'll be happy to listen to your workflow and make some suggestions (which you're free to ignore, of course).
stevefolta 4y ago
It’s not a question about this release, I guess, but are there any plans to support CLAP?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  We do plan to do so, but it's not a high priority for us at this point. A more urgent plugin-related task is an internal redesign to be able to handle multi-output-bus VST3 plugins. Unfortunately, Steinberg used a totally different model for this than Apple's AudioUnits (which was the basis for the existing design in Ardour), and some rather severe changes are required to get VST3 plugins that do this to work. CLAP doesn't really much for an Ardour user that isn't already addressed by LV2 or VST3, so although we do want to support it, it's not really on any critical path (other than wanting to support the general move to a not-owned-by-one-company plugin API).

stefanos82 4y ago

What is the original story behind Ardour's creation? What motivated you writing such complicated application? P.S.: I have the GUI layout and I don't care what people say about GTK!

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
I wanted a DAW to record my own fledging attempts at electronic music. I took a vow in the 80s to never use Windows, Apple systems seemed overpriced, and I had years of *nix experience, including a bit of Linux. In the late 90s there was a Linux app called "Multitrack" which seemed capable on the surface, but it turned out not to be. I called Digidesign to ask them if I could port ProTools to Linux for them (for free), and they laughed. So I thought "how hard could it be to just write my own?" ... 22+ years later, here I am. A longer version is here: https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333 https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-20th-birthday/102333
- meatsock 4y ago
  > my own fledging attempts at electronic music. i'd like to hear more about that.
- protomikron 4y ago
  That's a cool story. Ardour is awesome and shows that specialized niche software can compete or even out-compete commercial proprietary software (like QGIS in the GIS space). I hope it will be around for a long time and it's a nice piece of software, thx Paul.
frankzander 4y ago
you might find this interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndTAbjPqm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndTAbjPqm0 - I think Paul talks a bit about the background of Ardour and it's history
stefanos82 4y ago
Thank you for your reply, that's quite an interesting story! Don't ask me why my fingers typed "have" instead of "love" lol, I have no idea! O.o

smoldesu 4y ago

Holy cow, a nice-looking clip based workflow! The other day I bought Bitwig because I was looking for this exact thing on Linux. I don't regret it one bit, but it's amazing to see the beginnings of an open source solution to this! Hats off to the contributors who pulled through and made this happen.

gavinray 4y ago
If you're interested, there's a $20 plugin for REAPER that introduces a fantastic clip-launcher workflow, complete with MIDI controller integration/remote controls. https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/ https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/
- smallerfish 4y ago
  Playtime doesn't support linux though, does it?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  That looks awesome, I'd be interested in giving it a whirl once they add Linux support! Currently I'm sticking with Bitwig for the excellent DrivenByMoss Push1 integration, but eventually I'd like to give Reaper a try (since it has the same Push1 plugins).
- bambax 4y ago
  Didn't know about that, thank you! (Their terminology is confusing though: a "VST" that only works in Reaper is a Reaper plugin, not a VST proper...?) But anyway, will try it!
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    Reaper has it's own specific plugin format and language, JSFX (no relation to javascript), so that's probably why they specify it uses the VST format. But also relies on Reaper specific APIs making it only work in Reaper.

gavinray 4y ago

This is incredible, massive bunch of features! Congrats on shipping

beardyw 4y ago

I installed a copy of Ubuntu Studio on a spare machine a couple of years ago. I had come from Windows and Reaper and was used to one app where everything was controlled by the app. I was relatively new to Linux but kind of new my way around. But I found the principal of separate applications talking to each other a compelling idea, but in practice totally frustrating! I had VSTs I wanted to use and I got some to work though I don't remember how, but many synths just wanted to act alone via communication. Has anyone done anything to make all that less of a headache? Or was I doing it wrong? Not suggesting this is any fault of Ardour's.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Plugins on Linux work just the same way they do on macOS and Windows. But yes, it is true that to some extent, there was a tradition from the late 90s to the 20-teens to create synths as standalone apps for Linux, connected via JACK. That is really going away now, and you can run U-he synths, Helm, Vitalium, Serge and many others as plugins just like you do on macOS and Windows.
squarefoot 4y ago
I've used LinVST in the past to run Windows VSTs on Linux with mixed success, but it was more of a hit and miss; today I'm extremely happy with Yabridge which is a lot more polished, doesn't crap out at every WINE update and also is much quicker to operate. https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge
rigonkulous 4y ago
Exactly opposite situation in my case - my Ubuntu Studio rig has been rock solid for tracking and many projects .. but the good news is that even if, for whatever reason, you can't qite grok things to be as productive as a pro Ubuntu Studio user (hint: you can) we have all the good things happening in ZynthianOS to explore, anyway - and this just wraps up the same essential goodies into a hardware device that is push-button-user friendly: http://zynthian.org http://zynthian.org And of course there are bleeding edge lessons learned, applied in things like monome, etc.

NexRebular 4y ago

How's the latency situation nowadays on FreeBSD?

armitron 4y ago

I've looked at Ardour in the past but GTK put me off from investing serious time into it. Now that there is REAPER, I have to ask, what does Ardour do better and why would one pick Ardour over REAPER?

adamnemecek 4y ago
It’s open source.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Reaper is a fine DAW, and there are many fine DAWs. For the most part, which DAW is better for a given user depends a great deal on their prior experience, specific expectations and likely workflow. Neither Ardour nor REAPER are "better" than the other - they are different, and some people will love one and hate the other. More typically, some people will find a particular workflow that they use cumbersome in one of the DAWs and easier in another. If you'd like, you can listen to myself (lead dev of Ardour) spend 2.5hrs chatting with Justin Frankel (lead dev of Reaper). It won't do much to answer your specific question, but might reveal that the similarities in our development processes and history and goals are much broader than you might expect: http://adc.equalarea.com/2022/02/07/adc1/ http://adc.equalarea.com/2022/02/07/adc1/ If you're a user of Ardour, why would our choice of GUI toolkit have much impact on your use of the program?
- armitron 4y ago
  I appreciate the time you took in crafting this response, I will listen to the conversation that you linked. Regarding GTK, I could never stomach the specific "feel" that it has, and it's also been incredibly buggy for me on platforms other than Linux, and I use macOS and Windows a lot too. I haven't found a single GTK app that I can tolerate using on Windows or macOS so far. I find QT a lot better in that regard. I was a heavy user of Inkscape (GTK) back when there were no free alternatives, but when Krita (QT) matured I switched to it and never looked back.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

dang 4y ago

Related: Ardour -Audacity Alternative to Record, Edit, and Mix on Linux, OS X and Windows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27740936 - July 2021 (55 comments) Paul Davis, lead developer of Ardour on fixing big Linux audio issues - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739517 - July 2020 (41 comments) Ardour 5.9 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347758 - May 2017 (46 comments) Ardour 5 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281137 - Aug 2016 (64 comments) Ardour 4.0 released - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9403131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9403131 - April 2015 (1 comment)

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Note that I only started reading HN in 2019, which is why you won't any info from me in earlier items.

wanderingmind 4y ago

As someone who recently started dabbling in this area, can someone explain how Arduor is different from Audacity in its features. I know the telemetry issue in Audacity, I'm interested to understand feature differences and ease of usage.

MrVandemar 4y ago
My personal experience is that I installed Audacity and it was a good application for recording and editing sound. I installed Ardour and spent a couple of hours trying to get Jack to work or something like that and gave up.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Ardour does not require JACK and has not for many years. Unfortunately the internet is riddled with out-of-date and inaccurate information which makes many people believe that it does.
CameronNemo 4y ago
Audacity is a lot simpler from what I can tell. It is meant to record and edit audio without doing anything fancy. Ardour on the other hand has lots of additional functionality, such as a fully featured mixer with plug in support and the recently added clip launcher. There is probably a lot more to say, but if you are serious about making music, definitely choose Ardour. If you just want to record something quick, or something simple like a voice recording, Audacity can get the job done.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Audacity is primarily an audo file editor: you load (or record) a file into it, carry out destructive edits (i.e. the data on disk is modified), and then save the result. Ardour is a digital audio workstation, which mostly implies that it is a non-destructive, non-linear system. Edits in Ardour do not change any of the media data on disk (everything is done with meta-data). Ardour is designed to handle track counts that Audacity could not dream of (100+), does realtime FX processing (coming to Audacity in the next version) rather than having to process the data and write a new file on disk, and is generally much more capable for handling multi-track audio. Each one has its place. If you are really just editing an audio file, Audacity is likely to have less of a learning curve. If you involved in music creation or composition or recording, Ardour is much more likely to be the appropriate tool.

stelcodes 4y ago

For anyone on Fedora 36 wanting to play with Ardour 6.9.0 with some awesome free effects and synth plugins, try this: sudo dnf install ardour6 lv2-calf-plugins-gui ladspa-autotalent-plugins lsp-plugins-lv2 lv2-zam-plugins lv2-synthv1 lv2-amsynth-plugin All the plugins will automatically show up in the plugin manager!

ephaeton 4y ago

I've switched from ardour to reaper after having issues with plugin latency at some point in the - now - pretty distant past (different tracks didn't time-align after the sum of plugin latencies diverged on their respective tracks). I kept my subscription for ardour, though, because I think the project is awesome. Sadly now I've grown used to another set of quirks (reaper's), so switching back seems quite unlikely. Still gonna keep that subscription running...

kuon 4y ago

I use ardour as a mixer for live streaming, it works great, but I'd love native Wayland support and some "mini mixer" GUI mode with just faders and mute status for each bus.