Do let me know if any of these can already be fixed from “Preferences” option that I haven’t noticed.
Automatic “pinning” for quicker sidechaining: upon selecting a sidechain track in “pin connections”, automatically connect the pins to available sidechain inputs instead of having to manually drag each time. In each sessions I usually have at least 6-7 tracks sidechained to 808s/kicks, as well as 5+ sidechains running on delay/reverb/FX busses, so manually connecting all these pins for every plugin is very tedious and timewasting for me… I guess it may cause unintended problems when there are more than 1 sidechain input or more complicated plugins, but for most producers I don’t think that’s very common. (See GIF.)
Copy sidechain routing when copying plugins: Related for first one, if I have sidechained compressor on one track to my 808s/kicks, and I copy that plugin onto another track, currently Ardour does not copy the “pin connections”, so I have to re-input the routing anyways. Would save a lot of time if sidechain routing was copied, or at least if its an option in “quirks” or something. (See GIF.)
Option for horizontal display of favorite plugins, not just vertical scrollbar: For producers who have 50+ “favorite” plugins scrolling downward to bottom of list everytime to load e.g. Vital/Zam/x42 plugins is very tedious. Instead can we also enable an option for “horizontal display”, i.e. a menu that extends towards right? More similar to how FL has “floating” plugin selector. I guess some people will not like this, but at least option would be nice. (ALTERNATIVE: Allow jumping to plugins using keyboard letters, e.g. if I press ‘Z’ focus jumps to first plugin beginning with ‘Z’.)
Option for “floating”/“pinned” master bus in arrangement view when mixing with 40+ tracks, high CPU usage, and lot of automation tracks, scrolling in arrangement view from bottom track up to master at the top just to check on levels or master plugins takes some time, and it’s very important also to have it visible for master level monitoring. I know I can just switch to mixing view which has “pinned” master track on right side, but then master automation lane will not be visible… At least having this as option might be nice?
Resizeable mixer strips: Similar to how arrangement view allows to resize tracks via “number of visible tracks” option, this would be nice just for display accessibility, and for making plugins with in-line display more visible. Mainly I would want this option in arrangement view for left-side mixer strip — it makes sense since “Tracklist” strip on right-side and “Summary” panel on bottom are resizeable anyways. But perhaps adding “number of visible tracks” option to mixer view also would be cool.
Shortcut to switch between normal grid (1/4, 1/8, 1/16…) and triplets grid (1/3, 1/6, etc.) This is achievable using personal keyboard shortcuts (currently I have assigned Shift+3 and Shift+4 to 1/3 and 1/16 grid respectively). But since triplets are much more common for producers these days (I have rarely used “quintuplets”), I thought might be nice if we can have a button between “Snap” button and “Grid mode” button to switch to “triplet mode”.
Let me know what you all think, I guess there might be problems with these changes that I didn’t foresee.
Also, is there somewhere else that is preferred for suggesting these kind of changes? I thought I will post here just because I’m not programmer so don’t know how to contribute properly…
Right now, our two main devs (myself and @x42 are already very busy with the major changes that are going into 9.0, and so our attention for ideas like this is a bit limited right now.
We still value the suggestions, even if we don’t appear to act on them
Bumping this — is there any way we could just get add just the first two changes (automatic “pinning” and copying sidechain routing) to next Ardour release? I’m sick of connecting pins all the time
Opening Ardour Session with A Dummy Audio without sound engaged :
1. without compromising the previously saved audio input/output connections (Audio Connections would be disabled in this mode)
2. with plugins active but not able to produce sound
3. without engaging processors to allow for lowest power draw
The idea would be to access the session without engaging audio to be able to access plugins that may be broken (used as a safe mode but with plugins enabled), to allow a user to do basic editing (add remove regions, create rough song layouts, look at plugins and carry out organizational elements of the track) without hearing audio, or allow user to be able to add or remove plugins, create templates, create presets…
It would help laptop users in particular for opening, managing and creating sessions remotely when not connected to their main Audio Converters of their studio.
Essentially this would be a Silent, Low-Power, Plugins-Engaged Mode of Ardour.
“Plugins active but not able to produce sound” is not really a thing. Plugins don’t care where the data they process ends up, they use the same CPU whether it is delivered to an audio interface, written to a file or thrown away.
Editing without being able to hear is … well, sorry, I have no intention of ever working on that sort of thing.
I would prefer to see something like “audio connection profiles” here which would be different configurations of audio settings attached to a session. When the session is opened which contains multiple profiles, a dialogue pops up asking which profile to use.
The user could then have a profile which was “studio PC” and “laptop” and select the appropriate one.
Or maybe the dialogue was only shown if Ardour detected the audio setup had changed (with the ability to manually launch the switch from a menu).
Of course, as well as the audio/midi setup this would also require the audio connections for each profile to be saved, as you may be moving from an 18 input audio interface on one system to a 2 input one on another.
Personally, I would find this useful and it would also make sharing sessions between users easier.
It could also be used for switching between different audio connection configurations in a studio.
But I suspect it would be quite a challenge to add to Ardour. Maybe something to consider for Ardour 10 or 11 .
Thanks Paul. I did not realize the CPU is used by Plugins irrespective of whether they produce sound based on just larger sessions that tend to use more DSP power when they are running/recording versus stopped.
No need to take offense on the Editing… I thought that this was a discussion where we could present ideas and some ideas would not be liked by community. Clearly some ideas may not be spot on but the intention of helping the development of Ardour is more important. I think we all can agree on that.
No offense taken. I just need to be honest about where my time and effort will likely go. All ideas are welcome, and who knows, maybe someone else will be inspired.
Good stuff. Ardour is a great program. I am sure lot of ideas have started out as bad ideas but through discussion ended up being employed in one fashion or another as great add ons.
Glad to know we have dedicated people who are really pushing Ardour to be a great DAW.
Well, Ardour does come with a Dummy backend. In optimized builds it is hidden by default [1].
It is however not special in any other way, and Ardour itself cannot tell the difference if you use Dummy, or JACK, or ASIO, or Coreausio or ALSA…
The main benefit of Dummy is debugging: One can interrupt single-step though code, which is otherwise not possible with some actual hardware soundcard, which doesn’t stop. The dummy backend also come with a couple of useful MIDI event and audio signal generators, so one can test Ardour and plugins without rising any farts on the speakers.
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[1] While Ardour is not running, edit Ardour’s config file (.config/ardour8/config on Linux) and set <Option name="hide-dummy-backend" value="0"/> .
Next time you start Ardour, Menu > Window > Audio/MIDI Setup has an Audio System: Dummy.
Thank you so much. I will give this a try. I will save a backup as well of the original file so I dont mess anything up and for anyone else that does this. This is really a great option. Very appreciative of the insight.
The purpose of the ID is to ensure that control surfaces (think fader banks) follow the order shown in the GUI. If you’re moving stuff around in the GUI, you don’t want confusion about the order on your faders. So, if track 13 becomes track 9, the MIDI bindings are deliberately going to keep the ordering consistent. That is: the fader corresponds to the Nth displayed track, not “that particular track”.
This a deliberate design decision. It may not work for everyone and/or every control surface physical design, but it works for the majority of surfaces and (we think) the majority of users.
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