Ardour 2.X enters feature-freeze

Blog
#1

Ardour 2.X has now entered “feature-freeze”. No new features will be added to this version of Ardour (a few exceptions are noted below), and all development activity will shift to version 3.0. The release of 3.0 (which supports MIDI recording, playback and editing) has been delayed for a long time due to efforts to continue to improve 2.X and in particular to get the OS X native version into reasonable shape. It is now time for Ardour developers (and soon our alpha-testers) to focus on 3.0. Users with feature requests should contine to enter them into our
bug and feature tracking system, but do not expect to see them implemented in a 2.X release. We will continue to fix bugs in 2.X and any trivial features that can be back-ported from 3.0 will also show up in 2.X updates.

The rough plan for 3.0 is

  • finish off merging code from the 2.X branch
  • focus on bringing 3.0's audio support 100% into line with 2.X
  • review and revise MIDI GUI & workflow so that an initial release of 3.0 can be used by many users for basic MIDI related tasks
  • release 3.0
This is a simplification - some new work with audio and internal design will still be done as part of this process. Please don't ask how long all this will take - we don't know. You'll see news of progress both here and on the ardour mailing lists.

Once 3.0 has seen an initial release, we will start work on more dramatic changes to its capabilities. One complication in this plan is that for the two or three months, I want to use the remainder of my time here at the TU Berlin to implement a couple of features that are orthogonal to the above plan, but rely on resources (technical and people) that are here. These two features are "correct" 2D panning (with a much improved GUI for this), and a full control surface app for Ardour on the iPhone/iPod Touch. Very basic prototypes of both systems already exist.

The only new features that are planned to appear in the 2.X branch are:

  • support for saving/loading AU plugin parameter settings
  • using Apple's ExtAudioFile API to support MP3 and AAC file handling
#2

When MIDI will be available there will no reason to regret CUBASE any longer. Especially if MIDI can be combined with VST or other analogical synth. I mean: even when you are traveling with your laptop, you can do some stuff having all aboard…

#3

i think this is a good idea. i was using the svn trunk for a while, but i found that a lot of new features were being worked on in the 2.x branch and since i had a few issues with the trunk (understandable of course) i just switched back. i’d love to see more focus move to trunk and it’s new designs (from thorwil’s mockups etc).

nothing real important to add here, i just thought i’d say ‘thanks’ to paul and the other developers for this awesome software.

porl

#4

Yes, 2.7.1 is Good Enough ™ for daily use. The only (very bad) glitch for me is that recorded sound is offset by the buffer size and I have to manually nudge it backwards. This happens with my Edirol UA25 on Ubuntu.

#5

if you can prove it, i can fix it ™

#6

LOL! Well this is what happens to me, maybe i’m doing something wrong… Don’t know how to prove it. Keep up the good work Paul!