[Ardour-Dev] Some issues with 2.8.10

[fons at kokkinizita.net]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:30:37AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 9:50 AM,  <fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:
> > Probably yes, but I'm reluctant of continuing to use an app that
> > includes yet one more (for me) useless feature (midi) with all the
> > complexity an risks that brings. At least for work where any form
> > of failure means irrecoverable loss. It doesn't matter if the
> > problem is the result of a bug, or of the operator being required
> > to pay attention to unused features only to avoid having them
> > interfere by accident.
> 
> sure. but that's the tension between s/w development and s/w usage.
> 
> the fundamental errors in the design of the solo architecture in 2.X
> would cause just as much potential instability were they to be
> addressed in 2.X. early reports so far strongly suggest to me that 3.0
> will be more stable in just about every way than 2.X. there are some
> major thread related design issues (mostly caused by a library which
> 3.0 no longer uses for the same purpose) that exist as potential crash
> sources in 2.X - these too are all fixed in 3.0.

I just transferred the session that showed the 'solo problem'
to another machine that is running 2.8.7 instead of 2.8.10.
And - surprise surprise - here the busses *are* muted by a
solo on another strip. 

It's this sort of thing that makes me feel uneasy. For how
long does Ardour have solo ? One would assume that this is by
now a stable part of the code, and fairly independent of any
new features. Yet it isn't - apparently improvements to other
unrelated parts, or adding new ones, can still break it easily. 

Another example: after all these years it is still not possible to
load a session without the auditioner connecting to playback_[12].
Even if you save a session with these ports disconnected and the
level turned down, they are reconnected and the level set to 0dB
when you reload the session. Which means that just an accidental
click on a region can send a signal where you don't want it.

> we have worked fairly hard to hide MIDI features when they are not relevant.

I believe you when you say you're working hard :-). But I wouldn't
be surprised that in order to exclude all risks related to midi I'll
have to disable it over and over again, and try not to forget it.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

There are three of them, and Alleline.