initial work to make Ardour available for Apple Silicon has been completed.
A full version (incl. video-tools and plugins) that runs on BigSur on the M1 can be found at:
As a note, if you ARE on an M1 processor, don’t use Chrome to download the link above, curl works fine, and I believe Safari works, but for some reason Chrome breaks the downloads.
I have an M1 Mac Mini as of yesterday. I did have to install via Curl (the Safari download unpacked okay, but was ‘corrupted’ when I ran the application).
Ardour seems to runs great on my M1, except that I can’t get the inputs to work. It’s showing 24 inputs available, but I can’t record or see any meter levels change in Ardour. My MOTU 828es/driver may be part of the problem; the “MOTU Discovery” tool says there’s no interface connected, but the OS is showing an 828es connected, and “MOTU Audio Tools” shows me FFT/Scope data when I play into the interface. The system sound dialog says the 828es has no input controls, but Logic Pro allows me to select and record a single input or pair of inputs. I don’t see how to set up multi-channel audio in Logic Pro.
That aside, I copied over an Ardour project directory from my Windows system, and I can play it back and work with it on my Mac mini. It did complain about a missing file that seemed to be mapped to C\users\Dave\Documents\ but when I skipped all missing files it loaded fine. The built in plug-ins seem to work fine, and MIDI input from my keyboard is working. Didn’t see DSP go above 5% but I’m not really stressing it. I’m running with a 512 sample buffer (11.6 ms at 44.1 kHz).
I have to sort out some issues with MOTU before I make any judgements here. I’m really impressed with the M1/ARM pre-release. Thanks Robin, Paul, and all the devs/community members!
Universal. If you want to run x86 plugins, you need to use a x86 host under Rosetta.
You need ARM compiled plugins to run on ARM compiled hosts.
For universal apps you can tell it to run under Rosetta (As universal apps have both x86 and ARM code in the bundle) with a checkbox when you look at the file info for the app.
Heh honestly I hadn’t checked recording on this machine, it isn’t somewhere I do a lot of recording. I had mainly checked old sessions and my student’s work on it. I don’t 100% remember seeing the popup for microphone access honestly but that could just be because it was a while ago, I wonder if there is a way to force it.
So more testing needed, and I may be eating my words slightly, as I have my Izotope plugins installed as x86, but the AU versions are showing up in Ardour. Haven’t tested them yet so take with a huge grain of salt, not sure why this is working honestly.
Strangely the VST3 versions don’t have the same behavior. And yes I have confirmed both are x86 through file on the commandline.
Again take with a huge grain of salt as I have no idea how that could work, and goes against everything I have heard so far about the process.
Not usually. It should happen automatically when trying to use the device.
Here there was a popup when I started Ardour for the first time and opening the audio-device (by pressing “Start” in the Audio/MIDI Setup dialog). That was on Catalina/Intel though.
I do not have direct access to a M1, and only remote access to an A14Z dev machine (and that has no built-in mic, nor a soundcard connected).
Ok so short version, I can see the AU, but I cannot use it in any meaningful way. The UI doesn’t load, and won’t enable. So short version is even though you can see it you still can’t use it. This is closer to expected, but still a UX issue to be worked through.
I hear that. I don’t remember Ardour requesting that access. I tried dragging the app to trash and reinstalling, but it didn’t prompt for the usual first-time install things (how will you use Ardour, use hardware mixing, etc.) so I’m not sure if Ardour6 was fully deleted.
New build seems to have input, asked upon opening for permission to the microphone, and was able to record and play back audio from my MOTU Ultralite AVB using USB Class Compliant connection.
Brilliant! Thanks for the fix, Robin. I got the “Ardour would like to access the microphone” request and verified that recording works on my Mac M1 with Motu 828es via USB.
Incidentally, although the M1 isn’t officially supported by MOTU yet, I have been able to connect using Ethernet/AVB to access the web-based setup and control. Using AVB audio was tricky, though; I had one kernel panic and some garbled-sounding attempts as I played around with it. USB seems stable once I set up the interface through the web page.
