Let me start by saying, Ardour is my favorite DAW in the world, and I’m really looking forward to the release of Ardour3! I run a linux review site called ‘Linux In Review’ that includes YouTube video and written reviews. I review Linux distros and software, and focus mainly on studio distros and software. Very soon I will be doing a review of Ardour. While I am very familiar with the program, I always give the community an opportunity to throw in their two cents as to what features I should focus on, and what makes their product stand out from the crowd? So, any opinions from the ardour community as to focus and differentiation?
Also, at the beginning of each video review I feature a 10-15 second sample from a Linux artist. If you are an artist/musician that would like a snippet of a Linux created/recorded song you’ve produced included, please let me know, I need all the submissions I can get!
sounds very cool! It’s always good to have more media coverage about Ardour.
What’s not clear is whether you will focus on Ardour2 only or if you will also look into Ardour3-alpha. I would discourage you to review A3, since it’s not even feature-complete (well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t) and cleary still too heavily developed to be judged.
As for Ardour2, I totally like the ability to loop a section and place a punch in/out into this loop, so you can record a solo over and over again without having to click something. Plus the region view is great - it is semi-transparent, so you see the region+waveform but also the grid underneath it during editing (e.g. Cubase 5 has some problems with this, either you don’t see the region but the waveform+grid or you see the region+waveform but not the grid. Cubase 6 even worsened this behaviour. So Ardour’s design is not to be taken granted at all).
I only plan on reviewing Ardour 2.8 currently, and seperately previewing Ardour 3, with no ratings, just highlights of things to come. I know you can’t review an incomplete product.
Like akavir I have to say Ardour is probably the one single Linux application that swung me over to Linux. In 1998 I had an amazingly functional DAW for it’s time with Windows 98SE, CubaseVST 3.5 and a Turtle Beach Pinnacle ISA Soundcard that did reliable Wavetable sampling and 24bit ADC (in 1998!). Then Windows XP came out and effectively killed both support for Cubase 3.5 and ISA soundcards. I foundered with XP for a few years and was put off by the aggressive pricing and all to numerous upgrades to the Steinberg products and tried some alternatives like N-Track which never quite seemed to get there as far as reliability. Disenchanted and bored with XP and lower rent DAW’s after a few years I got into Linux and I found Ardour in it’s 2.X series was as reliable as N-Track and a little more intuitive I really liked features like Auto input and Linux supported some of my aging hardware like a Tascam US-122 quite well. I don’t do a lot of Synths or heavy duty region editing and I found when I did venture into that sort of thing Ardour was easy to use and quite stable. I’m sure the Ardour devs will groan but ArdourVST has always been important to me especially in the days before LV2, I pretty much made a science of tweaking Wine versions and Ardour SVN builds and had a really solid ArdourVST setup for about a year with Ardour 2.4. I would say that ArdourVST has slipped in it’s potential for daily use but with all the incredible LV2 offerings out there now it is a non-issue. The most amazing thing about Ardour to me is the community and hands on support of Paul and the development team, I’m just an average schmoe and more often than not if I pop by IRC with a question (often stupid) Paul himself will take the time to either answer or point me in the right direction with a link. Ardour is an amazing DAW whether or not the devs pick up the phone for users but the fact that they do takes it over the top as something much more than the tens of thousands of lines of code, IMHO it is a living breathing entity with a human face.
Review is now complete. I think you Ardour fans will find it very favorable. Thanks for the input on it. I still need submissions from artists of linux created music to use in my reviews. If you would like to show your music off, contact me through my review site. http://i2productions.com/lir