Ardour

Ardour 9.7 released

June 5, 2026

We are pleased to announce the release of Ardour 9.7. This bugfix release comes with several noteworthy enhancements: futher MIDI editing improvements, better listing of supported control surfaces, and a brand-new vertical scrollbar in the editor.

If you skipped v9.5 released last month, check out what's new:

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Pianoroll goodness copied to the Editor

In v9.5, we added a MIDI Tools sidebar (previously called MIDI Inspector) to pianoroll interfaces for chord editing and quantization. This is now also available in the Editor. Simply enable the Editor List (Shift+L) and select MIDI Tools in the drop-down list.

MIDI Tools in the Editor

Now that it's done, the Quantize dialog is gone. Instead, the inline editor will use whatever settings you have in the Quantize section in the MIDI Tools sidebar.

On a related note, the cross cursor for MIDI & automation editing is now also available in the inline editor and enabled by default. You can switch it off on the Appearance/Editor page of the Preferences window.

Improved list of control surfaces

Until now, the list of control surfaces was a mix of protocols and names of specific devices. In some cases, you had to know what protocol support to enable in Preferences to get to the specific device controls. Starting with this version, this is no longer the case. The Control Surfaces page in Preferences now groups supported devices by vendor:

Updated control surfaces list

Because Ardour can only support one Generic MIDI device with a map at a time, selecting another MIDI keyboard will remove the first one from the list of active surfaces. To help you use devices that are new and unknown to Ardour, we now provide an empty binding map for generic MIDI controllers and a generic device file for Mackie.

Each active surface also has its own Settings button on the right, so you no longer need to select the protocol first to access settings. Fewer clicks is better.

This entire batch of changes comes with an important regression fix: a variety of supported surfaces now work with "hot-plugging": they should once again be automatically activated when attached to your computer. We hope to extend the range of devices this works for in future versions.

Vertical summary

To complement the newly revamped horizontal summary pane, Ardour now has an optional vertical summary disabled by default.

Vertical summary

Just like its horizontal counterpart, it uses track colors to represent content and has the semi-transparent rectangular area you can pick and drag up and down to navigate the session vertically, However, it does not resize the view by design.

Quality-of-life improvements

Natural sort order in the UI
Ardour now uses a natural sort order in more places around the user interface. For example, it will now list variations of the LSP Parametric Equalizer going from 8 bands to 32 bands rather than 16, then 32, and then 8.
Natural sort order in the plugin selector
Save/recall misc-port connections per backend/device
Ardour already attempts to restore generic audio/MIDI connections when you switch between audio/MIDI backends. Now it will also do that for miscellaneous ports: the auditioner, the metronome (click out), and the LTC generator's output. As a consequence, the Preferences option for selecting a port for the LTC generator to connect to has been removed as it's no longer required.
LTC syncing improvements
Ardour will now keep recording even when the LTC sync is lost or the FPS changes.
Pianoroll polish
Scaling the user interface corectly on HiDPI devices can be challenging. Automation lanes in pianoroll interfaces are now more dpi-aware. Plus, Ardour now more accurately detects notes visibility range to scale the view accordingly.
Further MIDI chase cleanup

You shouldn't be getting drone notes anymore when the playhead and the note beginning are aligned. In addition, if you locate within a region, MIDI CC's and other parameters like bender, should also chase.

We still have some thinking to do about how to handle CC chasing when you locate outside of a region.

Fixes and minor improvements

  • Prevent instant crash when expanding the MIDI tools in an empty pianoroll.
  • Add unit tests
  • ArdourCanvas::Button: fix label centering and fix inner padding (formely named "margin")
  • Cleanup mp3 export fix
  • Disable timeout for library downloads
  • Don't print an error when session_port.rc file does not exist
  • Fix ardour.menus.in to refer to Editor actions unambiguously (for snap/grid)
  • Fix compilation with clang/macOS (const property)
  • Fix dangling reference to MidiRegion at session close
  • Fix formatting samplecnt_t
  • Fix mp3 re-export after audition (Windows)
  • Fix reset of AutomationControl values for MIDI parameters upon locate
  • Fix Windows/GDB
  • If PIPEWIRE_MIDI_BROKEN is set in environment, indicate this to MidiPort
  • Log failed downloads (not just header failures)
  • Remove the 32-bit MSVC build projects as they're no longer needed
  • Test for older pipewire versions in Linux startup script and ardev etc.
  • When adding routes to an otherwise empty session, select only the first one added
  • YTK: make translations work in distributed bundles

Translation Updates

Swedish

Contributors

Daniel Nylander, EZ4Stephen, Franke Burgarino, Gian Fontanilla, jean-emmanuel, John Emmas, Paul Davis, Robin Gareus.

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