AATranslator now has Ardour support : compatibility with other DAWs arrives!

AATranslator is a Windows program that converts sessions created in one DAW (or video editor) into formats understood by others. It supports session formats used by ProTools, Nuendo, Cubase, PreSonus Studio One, Vegas, Reaper, Wavelab, Pyramix, AMS Audiofile, Fairlight, Waveframe, DAR, N-Track, Sadie, and more. Soundscape.

We heard today that its support for Ardour is now complete (for the moment), meaning that it can both import and export to/from Ardour, and converts the following items:

  • Tracks and regions, all placed exactly as they were in the original session.
  • Gain
  • Pan
  • Envelope Gain automation
  • track pan automation
  • fades in and out
  • Crossfades

Here's what it doesn't convert:

  • track gain automation
  • bus/sends (every track gets routed into the Master inputs)
  • plugins/plugin settings

AATranslator's developer(s) will soon be adding track gain automation, when support for this feature is added for all the other DAW's that AATranslator supports.

Ardour and AATranslator user "tbonedude", has tested AAT extensively, and reports that the program works perfectly in WINE (crossover pro 9 and WINE 1.2) that is packaged with Ubuntu. We imagine this will run fine on any recent version of WINE including those for OS X as well.

Although I do not like recommending Windows applications to solve problems faced by Ardour users, and although it would be nice if there was an open source solution for handling session file formats, AATranslator is nevertheless an established and general purpose tool that provides solutions to users of all the DAWs it supports. It is reasonably priced (US$59), and will allow Ardour users to have good session cross-compatiblity with just about any other DAW (ProTools included).

Find out more at http://www.aatranslator.com.au/. And let us know of your experience if you use it.

Version 3.2 is now finally available

Lots of improvements across the board but mainly improved Ardour support.

Really cool. Thanks Paul for the news.

interesting :slight_smile:

Just a small correction: “runaway” is the AAT dev, “tbonedude” is the tester for ardour :slight_smile:

That’s great news!

@thorgal:

maybe that’s why it says: and AATranslator USER “tbonedude”…:slight_smile:

@lokki

ah damned! Paul corrected the article without notice :wink:

Very useful tool at a fair price.

Too bad it can’t convert Sonar files to Ardour ones. Got lot’s of them on old backup CD’s…

@lundberg: As I recall most versions of Sonar will export an OMF which AATranslator will read & convert to ardour
If you cant send me an omf then send me one of your sonar session files and I will see what I can do for you

A quick update:

Just added track gain automation for both import & export so testing on that should commence shortly.

runaway: I’ll get back to you as soon as possible! Would instantly buy this program if it could convert my sonar files…

AATranslator version 3.4.04 is now available - registered users should already have been notified of the download location.

Version 3.5 will convert ProTools 7 sessions to Ardour and (fingers crossed) should convert Ardour sessions to OMF.

We are also looking to add SAW Studio to our long list of supported formats.

As mentioned on the web site the ‘extended’ version will rise in price in the next few weeks so if you are thinking of buying you should consider doing it soon.

Just another update:-

Our next version has so much in it that it will be called Version 4.
Version 4 of AATranslator is just getting some last minute additional features (happens everytime).
This next version will allow Ardour users to import PTF sessions from ProTools versions 7, 8 & 9 and it will export an OMF which can be read by ProTools etal.
You can also import from Samplitude VIP sessions and we have improved most fade types and of course there is a heap more including some fixes for Ardour sessions in particular paths.

It has come to our attention that some Wine users may be having difficulty running AATranslator.

We have been informed that a Visual C++ 6.0 run-time component (mfc42.dll ) needs to be downloaded from microsoft
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259403

Also available from a more useful site http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks

We have just sent a hopefully more ardour friendly update to our ardour beta testers for them to test.
The folder structure AAT uses for creating ardour sessions should be more aligned with what is expected and should make the conversion process that much smoother.