Ardour 8.7 is available now for Linux, Windows, and macOS. We had originally planned for 8.6 to be the last release of the 8.x series, but over the 4-5 months since that release, we’ve accumulated a significant number of notable bug fixes and a handful of feature changes that we felt we should make available as part of an “official” release. Meanwhile, work on major new features for 9.0 continues.
EDIT: it turned out that there was a major GUI bug for macOS alone in version 8.7.0 We have updated the download system to provide 8.7.3 for macOS which should fix “all menu entries greyed out”.
Hi @paul and team, these are wonderful news, thank you for your continuing efforts !
I have so far got used to downloading the ardour source code and build it myself.
However, because I understand the kind of efforts imposed by developing (good) software, I decided to go for a one time payment. Is there a specific URL for downloading a corresponding version (I guess a fully supported one) ? Read the FAQs but still didn’t get it :))
Looking forward to testing the whole thing out with the soon to arrive Novation Launchkey 25 mk4… from a more decent machine than the frail and old surface pro 3 where I’m currently trying to learn Ardour from these days…
There are no fixed URLs for specific versions. We do not make older versions available, feeling that they undermine our continuing work on new features and bugfixes.
Ah, no “MIDI ghost tracks” and MIDI event chasing on the roadmap? Yes, I know anecdote about "two most important features”, but a little lobbying won’t hurt, I guess.
I really hope you do implement it at some point. Let me tell you one of the main ways they fit into my workflow.
I write my music in Musescore. I export the parts as MIDI files. I load the MIDI into the DAW. Then I play in/re-record the MIDI in realtime using the imported MIDI as a guide. Being able to see the imported MIDI as a ghost under my played in MIDI helps greatly in making sure I played stuff in properly, that my timing is accurate, and that I didn’t miss anything.
Another area where I find ghost tracks helpful is if I can view all tracks in a single piano roll, it gives me a great overview of the arrangement.
Turns out we had some breakage for macOS with this release. We thought enough testing had been done, but that turns out not to be the case. On macOS, it is relatively easy to end up with every item in the global menus made insensitive.
I’ve already fixed this, and we will replace the 8.7 build for macOS with tonight’s build.
My use case is very similar. This why for any major MIDI work still using MusE which has the feature. Actually, I like their implementation a lot, because you can edit notes from any selected track on a single pianoroll. By clicking on a note, all notes from a given track become active and others become “ghosts”.
On the other hand, implementation of similar feature in Ardour would be difficult, I guess. Mainly because there is no separate window for note editing and some new element to the editor probably would have to be added (e.g. MIDI “aggregate” tracks). No wonder it isn’t on the radar.
We decided it was time to reduce the number of possible rulers Ardour can display, to reduce confusion and chances for error. Those showing markers of various kinds have been reduced to just three: one for locations (single points in time), one for ranges (pairs of points, a start and an end), and one for arrangement (sections). You can still show all the same kinds of markers as before, but some of them (e.g. CD markers — it’s 2024! — and cue markers) no longer get their own ruler.
Sure, but what there is a situation if there is a bug in the new version and it isn’t fixed in the nightly. The user didn’t keep a backup of the previous version, and have some work they need to complete. The simple solution would be to roll back to the last working version, but this isn’t possible. So they are stuck until the bug is fixed - admittedly this is usually very fast for critical bugs.
