Thats because a vast majority of edm producers dont seem to use ardour. This is the mian issue. Edm isnt going away. Many younger producers are going to be making edm. And theyre not likely to stick around with ardour if you don’t make it easier for them to make music. I assume that if you did, you would likely get more users, which means more donations which means more money. Which means more time to work on things you like. Dont you want more money???
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if iit is a central part of someone’s toolbelt, then they’re likely to have specific desires that mean that sampler A is not the right one for them, and sampler B is.
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Ardour is used for much more than electronic music production
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Another example might help. I spent some time several years ago beginning to implement a step sequencer inside Ardour (the rationale was that a builtin processor, rather than a plugin, can have slightly better access to the tempo map than a plugin could). It was modelled on the MuLab step sequencer which at the time I thought was among the best one out there, though with elements taken from one of the step sequencers in Reason.
Since then, however, Stepic has come out and once you’ve seen Stepic there’s no turning back. The very marginal benefits of having slightly better access to some internals cannot make up for the incredible feature set of Stepic, and there’s really no justification for putting further work into another step sequencer that can’t do half the things it can.
But not only that, there are drum sequencers now that can be used as really powerful step sequencers (i.e. by taking MIDI out from them, rather than audio). Some of them have a deep and sophisticated knowledge of rythmn and groove that even Stepic doesn’t have.
Now it is true that both Stepic and the drum sequencers I’m thinking of are (a) proprietary (b) non-gratis (c) hard to run on Linux. But … thanks to VCV Rack/Cardinal, there are dozens to hundreds of amazing step sequencers that can run inside of Ardour with loads of subtle properties and capabilities (and some that are just truly dirt simple).
In the face of this ecosystem, having Ardour provide a step sequencer strikes me as silly. Our obligation is to educate and enlighten people about the tools available for them to use, not save them a 30 minute one-time task.
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I can apreactiate point 2 and 3, but i still dont understand this mantra of ( if we have a simple default, then that is somehow equivalent to forcing users to use it ). Thats just not true in this case. On one hand you say there are plenty of samplers out there to use, and then on the other hand you say we dont wanna give a default because users might not like the default. Which one is it? If a user doesnt like the defualt tool, they can use something else. But in cases where something else isnt available, a defualt tool is simply a benifit. Prodviding a default is not the same as forcing others to use it, not when its a plug in, like in this case. This problem is worse on linux than windows for sure. But not having a simple default for stuff is really frustrating when you put it side by side otyer daws. All i want is what i van only assume you also want. I just want ardour to be the best it can be. Regardless of whether we agree or not, you have to believe me. All i can do also is speak from someone who enjoys making edm music. And even though ardour is used for more than that, im just a person voicing their desires. Trying to improve my experience when using ardour for edm, and hopefully others. I would like to see more edm producers use ardour, so more people donate, so you have more money for devs which means more time to fix bugs.
I think it’s really cool, that you could just drag and drop Samples into this suggested sampler from Ardours clip library. Is this possible with other FLOSS samplers available? This would be a big sellingpoint to me. I did not know, that drag and dropping files is even supported for plugins! I remember i used this a lot when i used ableton lots of years ago.
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It’s not just about implementation though (and there are additional concerns here because of the usage of an LLM). Additional code means additional maintenance, more constraints when refactoring, more constraints when adding other desired features (which might conflict with this one), etc etc etc. Are you also pledging to maintain this code going forward? Are you also pledging to help with refactoring when needed or resolving conflicts between this code and other stuff?
I think that’s part of why you’re getting some pushback here. It’s easy to say “Oh, I implemented this cool feature”. It’s another to commit to maintaining/updating/etc it going forward, since otherwise you are putting that burden on others.
On top of that, one thing I have noticed (and highly appreciated) is that a lot of care goes into designing features in Ardour. Adding a mass of LLM-generated code goes against that design philosophy (one that I think a majority of us appreciates).
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i understand the sentiment, i really do. these code changes are for my personal build of ardour. the reason i started using and LLM for this is that many of my bug reports from years ago, basically went unfixed.only recently did i get the idea that its far more easy for me to just get an LLM to fix a lot of these little issues. which ive also made pull request for, because i feel i shouldn’t be the only want with these patches. even if they’re not integrated, that’s fine, at least i did some of the leg work in using an LLM to at least find or patch many of the bugs that ive wanted fixed in the past. the sampler is just a cool tool imho. the devs can take it or leave it. but most of the code tbh, is just lv2 preable from fluid synth, which the sampler is based on. its not that much code tbh.
some of these bug reports are years old since if pointed them out. there are a couple that have been fixed ( one thanks to claude btw ), but i figured, this could help. even if they use the code as a way to help them fix it their way. I think using an LLM to help fix and find bugs or low hanging fruit is a good idea, and would benefit everyone and would allow the devs to work on more features, than doing the boring but needed work of polishing and bug fixes for what is often ( a few lines of code ) .i just want to share the code with them in case they would like to use it or integrate it their way. they have every right to reject it. but the idea that ardour shouldn’t have a sampler is kind of crazy to me, either way. anyways, yes i understand, stuff like a sampler would be more code to maintain, but, thats true with every feature they are adding. the problem is, all the old stuff that never gets fixed or polished anyways.
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You can with just a sample and shortcircuit xt. I think you should be able to with lsp sampler, for some reason I can’t, but YMMV
IIRC nixos deliberately has a limited amount of packages. Anyway, if you want a decent amount of plugins you should look for a distro with a decent third party supply of audio software. Opensuse tumbleeweed with geekosdaw ( I personally use that) Fedora with audinux. That sort of thing.
@pyrotek 45
Well…you could be right that sampler is bread&butter for electronic music producer. (I’m talking of my own memories from back when i started-2001/2002 until, say 2005, something like that). I was into dnb, and the most intresting thing was shaping sounds in sampler, alongside creating melodies right out of my head right on spot using pattern-based Fruity’s workflow.
But, i don’t think Ardour is heading in that direction. From my point of view, it’s more a traditional-recording-aimed DAW like Pro Tools, Cakewalk, Reaper…
These days, my love for electronic music is resurfacing, so yeah, i’d love to have great sampler and about a few milion great sounds ready to be additionaly shaped, already available from the library on the side window 
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But no, i don’t think Ardour’s devs should waste their time on that. Whoever wants (possibly including myself), can already do that, Ardour is flexible enough for it.
im pretty sure all those daws you mentions have some sort of sampler though. so idk if its a good comparison lmao. protools has playcell ,groovecell, reaper has a basic sampler, and cakewalk has samplex, but i think cakewalk is a dead daw.
Yea, they all do have it (Cakewalk is alive, again , as i heard few days ago), but you know, installing a plugin is fairly straight forward, and it ain’t much different that way. If your dustribution is giving you trouble while installing plugins … i don’t know, maybe, that is kind of a silly distro for music production?
imho its about having to install a 3rd party sampler to begin with. i could argue, the same point right back at you about ardour. since ardour doesnt havea built in sampler, isnt ardour a silly daw for EDM, go use something else right? but i want ardour to be good for edm. see my point?
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Oh, i see…
In that case, ofcourse.
…And there’s all kinds of other things you could implement in that case. I remember when i first saw Reason (1.0 if i remember corectly) my jaw dropped .
About sampler… for single sampler we have samplv1: Samplv1 Linux only usually available in all distro.
Just-a-Sample, For all platform it can also record audio !
Multisampler, LSP (not bad but only suited for drums). Shortcircuit XT is very powerfull but not super easy to use.
Anyway, I also think that Ardour should be a bit more “production ready”. I’d like a multisampler for drums
After using Ardour for a bit more than 5 years, only midi, i discovered 4 weeks ago something called " a sampler " exists, and what it does.
Fooling around a bit with the mentioned ones (samplv1, the other v1 tools are pretty cool too ), lsp-sampler and shortcircuit, i found tal-sampler. It looks solid, but you have to pay for it, and as it is above me i couldn’t find out how much you can do with the demo version.
I for one don’t think i really need a sampler, as weird it may sound (point being: i doubt i will look any closer at the mentioned ones, too much time involved learning them, too little use for me).
Anyway, for the ones who haven’t heard of it:
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Tal stuff is really good, but yah not free unfortunately 
Keep in mind that we cannot use an LLM generated code in Ardour due to licensing issues.
see Ardour Development | Ardour DAW for details.
Those pull requests however are rather enlightening. It shows that those LLMs create horrible patches that mostly tape over some of the issues, without actually fixing them, and in case of Ardour just increase technical debt. Yet on the other hand they allow users to help themselves to some extent.
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Thats fair. Though some of the prs are for bug fixes perhaps you can at least use some of the code to sort of fix them your own way 
. Btw, The bottom panel lazy loading of parameters is a pretty good bug fix imho
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i would rather have a patch, that makes my experience better than none at all.not to mention, these issues should have been known to you for years, why are they still there in that case, if you know a better way to fix them? 
Yes and I hope you understand that this is not sustainable. If you pile one half-baked patches, it’ll eventually fall apart.
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it already feels like a lot of it is being held together with tape tbh. ( the piano roll is broken, new featuers getting piled on without fixing old ones ), so many paper cuts that have been reported and never fixed, ect. i cant use ardour for 5 minutes without running into some tiny bug or large bug. worst case a crash. i understand that seeing an LLM find an fixes issues doesn’t make you feel good. but from my perspective you should be able to at least use them to help debug to speed up bug fixes that are pilling up. even if its just showing you where to look. you guys need all the help you can get. you want to pretend like development is slow and accurate, but thats just not true. its more features, no polish. on and on and on.