Releases

Ardour 2.8.11 is now available. It contains only 1 change from 2.8.10, but its an important one:

• Do not prevent transport operations after an export (and potentially at other times)

All users are strongly recommended to upgrade. Remember that if you have a subscription or paid for an earlier 2.8 version, and were logged into ardour.org at that time, upgrades are free!

Ardour 2.8.10 is released into the wild today, primarily to fix an annoying regression in 2.8.9:

• keyboard presses and releases are now correctly sent to Ardour created plugin GUIs (e.g. for LADSPA plugins), making it possible to use the keyboard to set parameter values and define preset names.

In addition, Ardour will no longer abort if your home directory is not writable, but exits cleanly with a (hopefully) clear error message. This bug really only affects first time users who have been playing around with their system in an unwise fashion.

Just a couple of days since 2.8.8, and Ardour 2.8.9 is here. Why? It turned out that the infamous mute bug (which caused the mute button to do nothing) was actually not fixed in 2.8.8 (or prior versions where this has been claimed). This has been one of the worst regressions of recent versions of Ardour, and I mistakenly blamed packagers and distributions for it. Thankfully ardour.org member the_CLA spent time with me on IRC and we finally proved to my satisfaction that the bug was really in Ardour. Its now fixed, hopefully forever. Two other smaller but important bug fixes are described below ....

Its June and Ardour 2.8.8 is finally here. Time for everyone to upgrade!

Although this is primarily a bug-fix release, some of the "bugs" fixed are so pervasive and significant that they could almost count as new features. In particular, automation editing has finally arrived at a place that people with experience on other DAWs may consider actually usable. Issues with alignment of new and existing recorded material are addressed too, and there are lots of other bug fixes for issues small and large (including 3 or 4 crashing bugs). Thanks to motivation provided by the Mixbus project, there are also yet more improvements to AudioUnit plugin handling on OS X. Anybody using Ardour 2.8.7 or earlier should upgrade to enjoy increased stability and better functionality. Read more below ...

Ardour 2.8.7 has been released and can be downloaded now. This is a bug fix release almost exclusively focused on OS X. These fixes enable correct operation and use of several "families" of AU plugins, including those from Stillwell/Schwa. If you've had issues with some AU's even after the 2.8.5 fixes, this is worth trying. Linux users who do not use the Czech translation have little reason to upgrade at this time.

Fixes

• Smarter decision making when deciding which in/out configuration to choose when handling an AU plugin that has several.
• When exporting/bouncing/consolidating, tell AU plugins the new processing blocksize so they will actually run during the process. Yes, that means what you think it means.
• Remove use of std::locale() which is utterly and completely broken on OS X, and causes a program to crash if used with any actual national locale.
• Don't reconfigure I/O of AU plugins when they already have the correct I/O configuration

Translation

Updated Czech translation from Pavel Fric

Contributors

Ben Loftis, Paul Davis, Pavel Fric

Ardour 2.8.6 is released. There is only one one difference to 2.8.5 - VST-enabled builds for Linux are possible. There are no functional changes, and absolutely no changes for OS X, so I am leaving the current version for OS X at 2.8.5. The release was done mostly for the sake of those Linux distributions which provide a VST enabled build and don't like to work directly from SVN.

Ardour 2.8.5 has been released. Although I had hoped that the next release would be an alpha version of 3.0, we have accumulated too many critical bug fixes and a few nice to have features to let 2.8.5 wait any longer. OS X users of Ardour are STRONGLY recommended to immediately upgrade to fix a number of nasty problems that should now be gone. Similarly, anyone using MIDI control surfaces with a "Stop" transport button should upgrade NOW to avoid data loss when recording and using that button. Read more below for detailed release notes ...

Ardour 2.8.4 is here! It has been a month of mostly bug fixing activity, but some nice fixes they certainly are and we've included a couple of new features just to keep you all interested and paying attention. If you use BWF files for anything, this update is critical, because we have fixed a very serious error in the way we generate the header for such files. As of this writing, this is planned to be the last release of Ardour 2.X before 3.0alpha is announced (unless there are any critical breakages in this release). Read more details below ...

Harrison, the manufacturer of world-class analog and digital consoles, along with Paul Davis, lead developer of Ardour are proud to announce Mixbus®, a customized version of Ardour for OS X.

Mixbus enhances Ardour by providing critical mixing functions in a knob-per-function interface called "True Analog Mixing"(tm). True Analog Mixing is based on Harrison's renowned 32-Series and MR-Series console designs, combined with Harrison's proprietary digital mixing technology. Mixbus enables the user to record, edit, and mix a musical performance "in the box" while achieving a sound that harkens back to the golden age of album recordings.

Read more about Mixbus below ...

I am happy to announce the release of Ardour 2.8.1. Although this is primarily a bug-fix release, the bugs that it fixes are important enough that we hope all users, especially those on OS X, will choose to upgrade. Crashes when deleting AudioUnit plugins, and a very important potential data loss issue with session cleanup are now fixed. 2.8.1 also has a builtin "Chat" option to connect (via your web browser) to our IRC channel. To download, visit the download page. Read more below for details ...