Ardour goes harder: v6.0 brings 'huge engineering changes' to open-source digital audio workstation
- Reference: 1590656350
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/28/ardour_6_release/
- Source link:
Ardour is a full-featured audio mixer and editor with unlimited tracks and non-destructive editing, patching and routing, video sync for soundtracks, and plugin support for AudioUnits on macOS, VST on Windows and Linux, and LV2 on all platforms. Automation is possible with [1]Lua scripting. It is an alternative to the popular [2]Audacity , another cross-platform audio editor, but Ardour has a more complete set of features for audio engineers.
According to the [3]release notes , the main changes in version 6.0 are under the hood, where there have been "huge engineering changes". It has been a long wait; the previous version 5.12 was out in September 2017. "The primary reason for the very long interval between the two releases has been the scope and difficulty of these engineering designs and implementations," said the developers.
The result is full latency compensation so that alignment of the various signals routed through Ardour is precise. There is also a new resampling engine, the ability to add sound effect processing to a track when recording, simultaneous monitoring of input and output, improved MIDI support (though there remains "significant work to do"), and an enhanced plug-in manager.
On the audio format side, FLAC is now an option for Ardour's native recording format, and MP3 import and export is now fully supported – the developers were formerly [4]opposed to MP3 import because it is a lossy format and not intended for this use. There are hundreds of other new features, and experimental support for a web browser user interface using WebSockets.
We installed the new version on Windows and macOS, which is a bit of an ordeal thanks to security issues. Microsoft Edge said "this file is blocked because it could harm your device", then if you choose to keep it you get a further warning from Microsoft Defender SmartScreen on installation. On macOS Catalina you have to do the dance of trying to install, getting blocked, then heading to Preferences to unblock.
Ardour is most at home on Linux, and is included in the repositories of many distros, though it will take time to update them to 6.0. You can also download from the Ardour site, where the developers have chosen a business model where the software is free to use if you compile yourself from source, but if you choose a pre-built binary you pay either by subscription or single payment. The recommended single payment is $44.00 but you can pay what you like.
Ardour is built using the GTK+2 GUI framework, which was first released in 2002, and the last feature release was in 2011, though it is still maintained. GTK+3 is recommended for new development and GTK+4 is in preparation for release late in 2020. GTK+3 has better support for modern displays so why the old version?
Responding to this question on the Phoronix forum, lead Ardour developer Paul Davis [5]said that use of GTK+2 "won't be changing any time in the foreseeable future."
He added: "We would gain nothing and waste months (or even years) on porting. And to what? GTK3? GTK4? Juce? QT? Our users are too important for us to waste that much time on something with so little payback. We'll continue to work on developing more GUI tech that sits above GTK and generally sidesteps GTK, which we'd have to do for just about any other toolkit too."
Davis said that the security of an old framework was not worth worrying about since "in a program that loads arbitrary third-party shared objects and runs them with real-time scheduling and full access to everything the user can do – I don't think this is a major priority."
Answering a concern that some distros might no longer support GTK+2 software, he said: "We don't support distro builds anyway (they never get it right), so people will just be 'forced' to get it from us instead (which we'd prefer)."
It is a controversial point of view but one that has support from some pragmatic users. "The current state of Linux audio is that we don't even have enough plugins to cover all our needs, so if you start bothering devs with GTK3 and HiDPI, that situation isn't going to improve anytime soon," said one.
The developers of the InkScape vector graphics software told us that migration to GTK+3 was [6]the main reason for a long delay in the latest release so there is no doubting the extent of effort involved. ®
[1] https://www.lua.org/
[2] https://www.audacityteam.org/
[3] https://ardour.org/whatsnew.html
[4] https://community.ardour.org/mp3
[5] https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/desktop-linux/1181824-ardour-6-0-digital-audio-workstation-released?p=1181933#post1181933
[6] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/14/16_years_inkscape_v1/
Your argument flips over half way through. Assuming people wanted Gtk3 to natively render in Wayland then the need for XWayland would be lessened by one less piece of software that was dependent on it.
And besides that the main reasons for using Gtk3 is that code is more portable, supports hardware acceleration better, there are more widgets and layouts, Unicode support is better, theming is better, widgets scale properly on high DPI displays and it supports gestures and multi-touch.
Maybe none of these matter to an audio workstation. Perhaps the effort of porting is substantial and complex because Gtk3 does have some breaking changes to its API. But I imagine that even this software would benefit from button texts and widgets scaling properly on 4K displays.
Well exactly. The Wayland kids don't want to run XWayland. They want to distance themselves from any tech that they deem as old fashioned like X11.
You feel Gtk3 is more portable? I find that its reliance on a GPU is making it fairly awkward to port (even between UNIX-like platforms). I think it is also a nightmare to get working with Microsoft's cl compiler. Most ports are done via Msys2.
"The Wayland kids". Just stop.
I use both Ardour and Audacity, the latter mainly to tweak one stereo track. I think Ardour's multi-tracking is more intuitive.
I don't think I'll be upgrading to an X.0 release after "major engineering changes" though.
He's right
Much as I dislike GTK – QT is a far better choice – it's really a side issue for this kind of application.
Re: He's right
I use Qt in my day job and I agree it's a better choice if C++ is your chosen language and you don't mind Qt being your whole world. That's because it's not just a GUI - it has collections, networking, graphics, web browser, Javascript engine etc. It's a bit like the slogan for Royston Vasey - you'll never leave. I expect Qt 6 will not be backwards compatible either so software may stick with Qt 5 for much the same reasons as Ardour sticking with Gtk 2.
As for Gtk3 I think the main benefit is it isn't the whole world, it's just a GUI and the models that drive it. And since it's written in C the bindings for other languages are far better.
So use Qt for the convenience and portability. Use Gtk3 if you just need a GUI and nothing else or if your language isn't C++.
Re: He's right
My big worry about Qt is that it isn't standard C++. Arguably this makes up for some "shortcomings" but at the same time the MOC code generation stage is a big maintenance nightmare.
For example, try to get an on Qt 2.x or even 3.x project compiling on a modern system. The build tools alone (like MOC 3.x) are difficult to even track down and build.
What *has* kind of impressed me is wsWidgets. Almost all of the project builds and runs unchanged, even when gtk2 was switched out with gtk3 underneath.
Reaper
Never used Ardour, but if anyone's looking for a DAW I cannot recommend Reaper highly enough.
[1]Reaper.fm
[1] https://www.reaper.fm
Re: Reaper
From their website - "Note: Linux builds are experimental and unsupported"
One to keep in mind though.
> MP3 import and export is now fully supported – the developers were formerly opposed to MP3 import because it is a lossy format and not intended for this use
Jesus H Fucking Christ. That was absolutely infuriating thread to read. The attitude and complete disconnect from actual real world workflows is jawdropping.
In 15+ years, I don't think I've worked a single day where I didn't have to drag in an mp3 at some point for some reference or temp purpose.
No wonder Ardour has gained absolutely zero traction in the music world if it took 8 years to relent.
For the devs here, imagine if Microsoft forcibly prevented you from pasting text that came from outside your Visual Studio project, because "copying and pasting code leads to poor quality", and if you really need to do it for some reason, you can type it all in manually as a workaround.
It's that utterly insane.
All we need is an adapter layer to expose a GTK+2 like API ontop of GTK+3.
Why people keep whining about Gtk3 support is actually because they want to use Wayland. They have to realise that they cannot have their cake and eat it; if they replace the completely standard and tested X11 platform with something new, they will not have native access to their software for a long while. They will have to use a shim like XWayland.