Ardour 3.0 alpha 10 released

@ThePrep

Do you understand fully what is being said here ? Native Linux VST support does not mean you can run any VST you like on Linux without WINE. It means that plugins have to be built specifically for Linux but make use of the VST standard (as implemented using the vestige headers). If you want to use Windows VSTs you will be using WINE, end of story.

Completely, I want it all or nothing. I want to use Linux Native VST’s only, like Loomer and linuxDSP. I do not want to rely on Wine at all. This in my opinion is the only way Linux audio will grow is to have our own plug ins in whatever format that can be agreed upon. I just want the ability to have quality plugs to match the quality of Ardour, and stay in Linux 100%.

In short, I wish a plug standard would be adopted like the Mac/Windows platforms, and rolled out across the board instead of all the scattered formats currently. Linux never grew as big and fast as they said it would, why not our community focus on our standards, see if it grabs hold to the other task, spreads like wildfire. Set an example, standards.

LV2 is supposed to be the new linux standard for plugins . like vst on windows and au on mac .

@ThePrep … linuxDSP is on LV2 and I think the majority of plugins released in the last couple of years have been lv2. The standard is there and there are quite a number of plugins… What will bring the masses is if more commercial developers get on board, unfortunately this is a catch 22, the commercial developers don’t want to go where there aren’t lots of customers… OTOH… for synth plugins arent’ the only solution in a jack environment… and things like Bristol, yoshimi and even good old xsynth can provide some good sounds …

@ThePrep: There are a lot of very visual very useful, handful and great quality LV2 plugins available, i use Ardour and Mixbus only in my studio, check out LinuxDSP Plugins, CALF Plugins, Invada Plugins, i use mostly those packs, if you NEED more quality, i recommend going ANALOG, there are no AMP sims that can sound like a real tube amp, even a bad tube amp with a Shure SM58 I.E. will sound better than any AMP Sim. now about Synth plugins “Allank” noted a couple of plugins that im shure work pretty well.

I have used the Calf synth, decent bread/butter. But I own a good amount of commercial software, so I am a bit spoiled with GUI’s, features etc. Loomer looked liked a great option, but no native VST support for Ardour 3. How can I run the standalone VST’s and VST’s, have Ardour trigger the MIDI notes? I know I can route audio back in to Ardour with JACK. I produce mostly electronic music, so I am all MIDI.

JACK routing works the same for audio and MIDI and Ardour is all JACK, so yes, you can route MIDI into and out of Ardour just like you would audio. (Sorry if I misunderstood the question)

I’d also like to echo LV2. LV2 is still in it’s infancy, give it time man! There will be far more and far better! I see no long term reason to support VST, and short term reasons are always the wrong reasons.

I think my best option will be hardware for synthesis and Ardour to trigger/record.

By the way, how do I build the Alpha package? I’d like to see all the new changes in Ardour. I’m new to command line, GUI’s have ruined me.

@ThePrep: if you’re new to the command line, there’s really no point in getting into building Ardour. If you really want to, information is available at http://ardour.org/building_ardour3 but I release a new alpha/beta of Ardour 3 at appropriate points (i.e. where things are reasonable stable and/or significant new functionality has appeared). You can just download and try that.

@ThePrep: as I’ve stated on numerous occasions (even further up in this thread), I am not personally interested in Linux “native” VST (I think its a mistake for developers on Linux to be supporting the VST “standard” in this way), so I’m not going to put work into supporting it. I have put a significant amount of work into support Windows/x86 VST on Linux (along with some other brilliant people), but the result is a program that is almost impossible to debug and whose usability depends on the state of Wine which we have no control over. It also tends to lead to unrealistic expectations - “I have all these plugins that I got for Windows, I should just be able to run them on Linux” - which in turn ends up causing frustration and headaches for users.

That said, as Xperienced noted, you can use JACK to route audio and MIDI to/from other JACK clients that do support these things (including FST as a standalone Windows/x86 VST instrument host), and thus keep the mess out of Ardour.

@ThePrep: After reading your posts, I suggest you check out LMMS.

Personally, I don’t like it very much (wine is one of its dependencies), but I think it might just be your cup of tea.
There’s always something for everyone out there. :slight_smile:

And if you miss some functionality you can certainly run it in pair with Ardour…

There are probably tons of more options out there.
Google linux audio, and see what comes up.
Also you can check your distro’s repos for easy installations.
You can browse different categories in your package manager’s GUI (synaptic, software center, PackageKit, Yumex, etc).
Or you could search from command line, to quicken up things (apt-cache search daw for debian-based and yum search daw for fedora-based).

Another option is to do a fresh install of Ubuntu studio or Fedora with the CCRMA repos (or the likes of them)
That way you will have loads of stuff pre-installed, so that you can try things out and make your picks.

Well, got carried away.
Just start by installing LMMS (which is probably in your repos) and see if it fits your needs.

Hi people, been a while since I had time to experiment with Ardour, but I tried the 3.0 branch long ago, when there was just a proof of concept MIDI implementation.

To night I curiously downloaded this snapshot, and got really impressed.
I laid down two very loose tracks in the sofa with a nylon string guitar via my internal laptop mic, and proceeded to fool around with the new gui.

I added a CMT highpass on the rhythm track, and went hmm what does that “Plugin Analysis” thingy do? When i saw the waveform being manipulated in real time I just sat there with a big grin on my face. Thank you all so much for your hard work!

I’ve been using Ardour2 now and then for some years,and will use it a lot more when i get my new sapphire pro 24 to behave properly, and don’t just refuse to start randomly.

Next step will definitely be to upgrade to Ardour 3. But first ill have to play some music!
Developers! don’t forget to have fun some times, you really deserve it.

@Paul

Until now i wasnt interested enough to worry about this next question but as i was talking to a friend of mine i was sure i could “mix a low cost movie in dolby” with ardour or mixbus but as i come back to the software and the forum i can’t seem to find documentation that indicates how can it be done and how well woud the result be…

so… Paul … my question is quite short and quite annoying i supose: will A3 allow us to mix in dolby or export to a format that could be easily transported to dolby? see… in my country it seems there are no dolby mixing studios, so movie makers here end up sending their projects to Argentina or somewhere else to be mixed and brought back arising a lot the cost for movie making, but could all that be done in Linux? could I do it? what would i need? (aside from the room - monitors etc) - pardon my bad english and thanks in advance for your patience!

@fernesto: dolby is a proprietary format and it is not possible to provide an open source implementation of it. it will not be provided in a3 or in any future version of ardour. there are ways to use an external dolby encoder on a mix created in ardour (or some other app), but the devices that do this are fairly expensive.

@fernesto: also, possibly you meant something more generic like “5.1” or “7.1” or “10.2”. if so, it is possible or likely that some future version of ardour will provide panning for this “format”, but again, we cannot encode it as a dolby-encoded signal.

@paul: thanks a lot for your answer, that actually answers a lot, as you say, future versions of Ardour or Mixbus with multichannel panning support (sort of a XY axis) would be great, after all, even when you would finally have to end with a propietary software on Mac or Win, being able to mix in Ardour or Mixbus would be always appreciated by already users of Ardour/Mixbus interested in this matter. thanks a lot a gain man, great work with ardour.

How can I run the standalone VST’s and VST’s, have Ardour trigger the MIDI notes?

There is a program called “vsthost” you can install that will allow this. It builds on Wine as far as I know, and integrates with JACK - and thus with Ardour. Like anything Wine it is a bit hit-or-miss. I have had a few VST synths freeze up, but most of them work fine.

So far I Alpha 10 is my favorite. I use Ardour + Bristol + Hydrogen and this is the only version that doesnt click when playing Bristol.
The other versions ( 2.12 alpha9, Mixbus 2.03) would make a clicking sound when playing a Synth chord progression.
After I updated Ardour to alpha 10 the sound was gone. Thank you Paul et al. I think the whole interface is easier to use than 2.12.

Really excellent! I’m looking forward to the stable version. But it’s still much fun fun playiing with the alpha. Just one question. How can I create a loop or punch range? In Ardour2 I used to draw the range with the right mouse button.