[ardour-dev] Ardour2Beta5.1 Issues

[Shayne O'Connor]

i've been playing around with the latest Ardour beta, here are the
problems i've been having:

I built Ardour with: scons PREFIX=/usr VST=yes

to get VST support to build, I had to unzip the VstSDK 2.3 in the
libs/fst directory, then create a 'vst' directory within libs/fst and
move all the files from the VST SDK's source/common directory into
there. It all built and installed fine, but to run ardour, you must
run 'ardourvst' if you've built with VST support.

VST support seems to be working quite well, though i haven't tested
saving a session with VST's in them (when first running ardour with
vst support, it may crash a few times as it generates some kind of
reference files for your vsts). Also - Ardour looks in libs/vst for
plugins - i have mine installed in /home/flowbot/vst, so i just
created a symlink to that from libs/vst.

as for stability, here's the problems i found (probly all my sessions
are ardour2 sessions, though i was working on them in ardour.99 for a
while when i couldn't get ardour2 to work):

*  creates all new sessions in home directory

*  cannot successfully open a saved session from an already opened
session - ardour will always crash

*  sometimes does not shut properly when exiting - ardour will
disconnect from jack (not visible in qjackctl connections), but the
main window doesn't close and must be forced to.

*  if a mute is enabled on a track, the mute button will only show as
enabled on the channel mixer strip - it won't show as toggled in the
main editor window channels until you toggle it off and on again.

*  ardour crashes 100% of the time when trying to open a snapshot of
an already open session.

*  doesn't always show meter/bar lines ... zooming in or out seems to
effect their visibility.

* Ardour also crashes whenever you close a session that is using a VST plugin.

anyways, i was really happy to get VST working for the first time in
Ardour2 ... but the above issues make working in Ardour2 a real pain
at the moment. i've just built beta5.1 with debugging support, so if
you want me to hunt down any of this stuff for Mantis, just let me
know :)

Shayne