[Ardour-Dev] Ardour 2.3 released

[Harold Aling]

On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:58:52 +0100, Fons Adriaensen <fons at kokkinizita.net>
wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 08, 2008 at 09:25:10AM -0500, Paul Davis wrote:
> 
>> 2.3 includes major new features in the area of tempo management
>> and feature analysis, a dozen or so important-to-useful bug fixes,
>> another dozen or so improvements and provisional LV2 (LADSPA version
>> 2) support.
> 
> 
> Congratulations to all involved !
> 
> While it's good to see development of Ardour continue,
> this announcement saddens me in some way.
> 
> What follows is my personal impression and evaluation,
> things may look different to others, and it's not meant
> to degrade the magnificent work done.
> 
> What saddens me is that the new features make it
> plain clear what has been in the air for some time:
> that Ardour is moving away from being a DAW to being
> a WPMPW - a Western Pop Music Production Workstation.
> 
> Features such as tempo analysis, editing while
> preserving beat alignment etc. are very centric to
> one particular type of music and make absolutely no
> sense outside that area of interest. Add things like
> time strectching or even just midi and the picture
> is complete.

If you don't need it, don't use it.

I don't use the 2nd menu option in the 'edit' menu of some program.
Although I find it a waste of resources to draw that menu item and compile
the code needed for that specific feature, it doesn't 'sadden' me at all!

Maybe some day, I will use that feature and I'll be glad that someone has
taken the time, effort and dedication to develop, test and maintain it!

I'm anxiously awaiting the Ardour3 release, that will incorporate Midi.
Maybe I'll be using Midi on only 1% of my projects, but when I'll need it,
it'll be there!

> Of course this is 'market driven' - it follows 'the
> competion' and viewed in that context it is only to
> be expected.

It's 'user-driven', 'by populair demand', etc.

> But if you want a DAW that just does 'audio' processing
> - recording, editing and mixing - without in any way
> touching the 'musical' aspect, all these stuff *does*
> get in the way, even if only by complicating the user
> interface.

Don't use those features then. You might even remove them from your menu.

> And it certainly gets in the way by increasing complexity
> and consequently degrading stability and reliability.
> I'm seasoned enough in software engineering - and so all
> the Ardour developers I imagine - to know this is really
> unavoidable. And none of these features are optional -
> you can't build Ardour without them unless you really
> love a major headache.

Stick to Ardour2 and you'll never see a Midi track.

> What this means is that at some point I'll have to
> abandon Ardour and search for another solution. Or
> build one myself. And that makes me sad, because
> Ardour is a great piece of software.

It sure is!

What saddens me is that when Ardour3 is released, the new features will
make plain clear what has been in the air for some time: you'll never
install it.


-H-


Loving Ardour! (and midi tracks, time stretching, beat detection, etc, etc)