Ardour 5.1 is primarily a bug fix release that corrects a number of issues (some notable, some minor) that were discovered after 5.0 had been released. There are a few new features and some improvements in the GUI, Lua and OSC support. Most users will want to upgrade to 5.1 as soon as possible.
Fixes
- Trimming regions with the mouse is now possible again, without changing program settings or hitting a 1 pixel wide strip.
- Fixed bug with the a-reverb plugin's all-pass filters causing poor quality sound.
- Do not alter the length of audio-locked MIDI regions when tempo map is changed, or when they are moved.
- Fix crash when using plugins that (a) have internal latency (b) request musical time information.
- The Linux installer now correctly handles spaces in the value of XDG_DESKTOP_DIR (so that, for example, "Área de Trabalho" will work).
- Correctly notify plugins about musical time and tempo map changes.
- On Linux, make Window Manager close/delete button (the "X" in most window manager window decorations) work for various dialogs.
- Undo/redo is now prohibited while actively recording, to avoid creating bizarre condition.
- Linking of aux send panners to track panners now behaves as intended.
- Entering brush-drag mode (by pressing the "b" key) no longer remains in effect until program close.
- Fix crash at exit if key bindings editor was open.
- Fix crash when using video with non-integer aspect ratio in a locale that uses comma as the decimal point character.
- Fix state restore in LV2 plugins (potential crash or deadlock).
- Tempo marker movement now snaps to the future grid, not the current one (fixes jittering tempo movement when snapping with long accelerando/ritardando sections).
New Features and Improvements
- New plugin: a-fluidsynth. Wraps the Fluidsynth SoundFont2 synthesis engine as a new sample player. Load SF2 sample libraries and play!
- Region normalization can now use RMS analysis.
- toggle-location-at-playhead.
- Tweak keyboard shortcut modifier definitions to avoid overlaps between different kinds of functionality.
- Allow first-move-direction constrained dragging of MIDI notes.
- Group, automation state buttons in track headers and strips are now dropdowns.
- Report quarter note rather than beat position to all plugins (reflecting a long-lived weakness in most DAWs and plugins that Ardour does not have but needs to work with).
- Make many buttons that trigger menus behave more consistently with respect to press/release behaviour.
- Ardour does not participate in "App Nap" on OS X.
- Extending an empty selection (Shift-click) now selects the clicked region (similar behaviour to most other sane software of many kinds).
- Duplicate tracks/busses dialog now has an "Insertion Point" selector to control where the new tracks/busses are placed.
- Update GUI correctly when trimming a MIDI region changes its position.
- Dropdown popup menus are now positioned much more appropriately.
- Numerous small layout details in the GUI tweaked and improved.
Lua
- Add new Lua APIs covering the following functionality:
- Track coloring and ordering.
- Session configuration.
- Stripable (base class of all Tracks, Busses and VCAs).
- Monitor Section.
- Add track properties example script.
OSC Support
- Add value feedback to main strip fader and and input trim control.
- Control/setup GUI redesigned and extended, including preset loading and remote port setting (for TouchOSC and other crippled OSC controllers).
Known Outstanding Issues
Using Ardour on OS X with multiple monitors can result in dialogs being displayed on the wrong monitor when reloading a session.
Using Ardour on OS X and using dialogs results in the dialogs floating above all other windows on the screen, even if Ardour is not the "front" application.
Fixes for both these issues will be forthcoming in 5.2.
Contributors
Nathan Stewart, Robin Gareus, Nick Mainsbridge, Paul Davis, Damien Zammit, John Emmas, Julien Rivaud, Tim Mayberry.