I rather disliked the transition from the old style bar meters with the clip display to the new rainbow colored strips. I went back to an old ardour 2 version, Little did I know that the problems I was having with echos and so on were my sound card settings. And some problems I had configuring JACK 2. but my overall decision to revert to the release on the JAD 1.0 distrubution was the gui and the meters. I know its nicer to take up less space on the screen for some, but I would actually like to have an accurate representation of the signal levels reported by JACK.
Other than that I can’t wait for the midi capabilities really its the only thing missing. Perhaps later on it will be easier to handle loop files too, with a file browser window as using Ardour 2 for looping is rather difficult. But after a midi controller is added, Ardour can handle a full range of performances then so I’m excited.