[Ardour-Dev] Ardour 2.3 released

Fons Adriaensen fons at kokkinizita.net
Mon Feb 11 04:48:18 PST 2008


On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 01:35:36PM +0200, Sampo Savolainen wrote:

> > 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.
> 
> I disagree with this generalization. "Western pop music" is hardly one
> thing, nor is it based on only one set of aesthetics, or based on a single
> process of making music. WPM has a lot more depth than just Britney & Justin
> and the field contains a huge variety of different music.

Which generalization ? It was not, and is not, my
intention to argue about a definition of Western
Pop Music, nor about its relative merits or value.
That there's more in it than Britney & Justin I
know very well, and some of that is music I love
and enjoy a lot.

> Ardour gives a way to split regions based on transients within the source
> material. That sort of operation can be used for much, much more than "just"
> beat slicing, time correction and tempo shifting. You can use those features
> to splice up spoken word or an environmental recording and do wonderful
> collages using timestretch. It's not just for WPM.

My ears will tell me where the relevant features are, and
if any particular edit is OK or not :-) I've been editing
spoken word and music by cutting and splicing tape long
before Ardour or any DAW existed. And in many cases that
allowed the job to be done faster (for the same quality)
or better (for the same available time) than any 'assisted'
method I've seen so far. Not that I would suggest to go
back to those times, but the difference is quite clear.
When I was a junior broadcast engineer I would get a
written reprimand from my supervisor for every edit that
would make it on air and not sound natural. Now when I
listen to the radio news I can't keep up counting them.
They are using 'automated' methods now of course.

For doing simple, manual but very precise edits in an
efficient way Ardour is still not what it could be.
I'd much love to see that improved rather than new
features being added.

And yes you can produce wonderful things using time 
stretching and similar techniques. But is Ardour the
place to do it ?

> 99% of the degradation in stability or reliablity of such
> features affects only those features.

This, I just don't believe to be true.

-- 
FA

Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia

Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.




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