[Ardour-Users] Ardour 3.0 beta1a released

[Paul Davis]

After a furious 3 months (more than 600 code commits), the Ardour team
is pleased to announce the release of Ardour 3.0 Beta 1. This is the
first version of Ardour 3 that has support for OS X (Intel only for
now, sorry PPC users), where you will find fully functional AudioUnit
instrument support among all the other goodies that Ardour 3 brings.
The (very long) list below documents the other many changes, including
support for Linux native VSTs, an initial new version of Freesound
browsing, some shinier (and perhaps out of place) new buttons, and a
metric ton of bug fixes and improvements.

    * Linux x86 (32 bit) binary package:
http://ardour.org/files/Ardour_32bit-3.0beta1a_10644-dbg.tar
    * Linux x86_64 (64 bit) binary package:
http://ardour.org/files/Ardour_64bit-3.0beta1a_10644-dbg.tar
    * OS X Intel binary package: http://ardour.org/files/Ardour-3.0-10644.dmg

A word of explanation about what a beta release means. This is not a
release candidate. Its still an early release in which quite a lot of
things are unfinished or experimental. To see what we intend to fix,
add, remove or change before the final release of 3.0, check out this
list.

Important Linux Notes
================

These packages use a version of the Cairo graphics library that uses
hardware rendering for gradients. If you are using an old Nvidia
driver (older than 270.41.03), the new buttons will not render
correctly for you. We are considering what to do about this situation
for beta2.

Important OS X Notes
================

To be able to route MIDI to/from other CoreMIDI applications or
hardware ports, you will need to:

   1. Enable the IAC MIDI driver from Audio/MIDI setup if you want to
exchange MIDI with other applications
   2. Start other applications before you start JACK if you want to be
able to exchange MIDI with them
   3. Be sure you use the JackPilot Preferences to enable MIDI
"bridging" before starting JACK
   4. Have Pete Yandell's MIDI Patchbay installed for patching

At present, JACK's ability to bridge between its own internal MIDI
routing and CoreMIDI is "static" - it does not detect the arrival or
departure of new MIDI ports as devices or applications come and go. We
plan to fix this, either in JACK itself or in Ardour if necessary,
before 3.0 is released.

Initial startup will be very slow, even more so if you have not used
Ardour before. It will do a scan of both the system fonts and all
available plugins. Subsequent startups will be substantially faster.
And yes, we know we need a splash screen.

Please note that all keybindings that use the Control or Alt keys have
been switched from the situation in Ardour2. It has become more clear
that Apple really did not design their OS or GUI with the idea of
using Alt/Option as a modifier, so Ardour3 now uses Control where
Ardour2 was using Alt. In this beta release, attempting to set your
own keyboard bindings using the Alt modifier will likely fail.

The download is very big (around 160MB). It will unpack to around 1GB
on your disk This is because we are currently making debug builds
available, which come with all the internal information needed to get
useful crash traces. Once 3.0 is released, the package will be around
40MB (the same is true on Linux).

Like other zero-cost versions of Ardour built as a ready-to-run
package for OS X, this beta does not save the state of AudioUnit
plugins.

This version of Ardour has been built without internationalization support.

New Features
===========

    * Linux "native" VST support
    * Give route groups their own colors
    * Allow route groups to color their tracks
    * Add option to insert time on all a track's playlists
    * Option to glue new markers to bars and beats
    * Implement invert selection for MIDI notes
    * Add Selection-by-note-range for MIDI notes
    * Add session option "MIDI-region-copy-is-fork". If set, all MIDI
region copies will be independent from each other; settable via
Session->Properties->Misc
    * Offer explicit monitoring choices, so that tracks can be forced
to monitor their inputs (and more)
    * Auto-connect new track/bus inputs to physical ports is now the default
    * Auto-connect new track/bus outputs to the master bus is now the default
    * Experimental, incomplete reimplementation of Freesound browser
(part of the import dialog), allowing users to find and use audio from
the vast Freesound audio database.
    * Add option to have track/bus selection linked between the editor
and mixer windows

GUI Changes
==========

    * On OS X, switch all use of Control and Alt/Option keys (closer
to Apple's standard modifier usage)
    * New ArdourButton widget, now widely used for buttons that convey
state through their visual appearance
    * Rearrange the transport bar; items not frequently modified while
working (auto-input, time-master) have been moved to
Session->Properties or Edit->Preferences
    * Use evenly distributed green palette for MIDI notes.
    * Use standard selection colour (purple) for selected MIDI notes.
    * Less day-glo panner colours based on audio track colours.
    * Make meters with different colour parameters actually work.
    * Fix meter colour gradients (mid and top were swapped).
    * Fix meter colour range to again have a hard knee at 0dB and
twiddle colours so >0dB levels are red and stand out.
    * Fix style of the clock in the insert time dialogue.
    * Increase threshold for zoom-by-horizontal movement; ignore
movements to y positions outside the scroomer; round page size and
value to prevent 'quivering' during drags.
    * Put session-modified asterix in mixer window title as well as editor
    * Redesigned info bar (ideas from Chris Goddard)
    * Reorganize Preferences dialog a bit
    * Add Visibility control for a growing number of repeated GUI
elements (particularly in mixer strips)
    * Restore mixer strip comments button, but optionally visible.
    * Don't show busses tab in MIDI connection managers, since there
are no MIDI busses yet.
    * Clean up display of channel buttons in monitor section so that
it looks optimal for both normal people and ambisonics freaks
    * Add options to add ports to input/output menus on mixer strips.
    * Add an option to disable editor update during drags of the
summary pane (helps GUI performance with large sessions)
    * Add option to set default-session-parent-dir
    * Don't offer up Send editors for internal sends (too confusing,
because they are not like JACK-level sends)
    * Add tooltips for plugins/inserts/sends in the mixer strip
    * Drastic overhaul of keyboard handling in mixer window.
    * Fix port matrix dimensions on non-24-bit displays
    * Make "OK/Apply" the default response in several dialogs
    * Set window icons for the startup window
    * Provide global prelight option (its in Edit -> Preferences->Interface)
    * Alert the user if a connection is made which causes feedback,
and preserve the route graph in the state that it was in before the
feedback was introduced. The intent being to simplify the code, reduce
the number of areas of code which must consider feedback, and fix a
few bugs.
    * Provide global prelight option (see Edit -> Preferences->Interface)
    * 2 level structure for theme manager window, to help with
themeing ArdourButtons
    * Fix transparency of selection rectangles (and change color a bit)
    * Add "active" indicator/control to rows in the editor route list
    * Fix insertion of processors at the point at which the processor
menu was opened; give a visual cue to indicate where a processor will
be inserted.
    * make return/enter trigger the default action in a variety of dialogs

Crash Fixes
=========

    * Fix crash caused by empty bundles
    * Fix a crash with plugins when the processing of a block of audio
is split up (e.g. for automation handling)
    * Fix crash on rename region
    * Fix crash when moving end marker after deleting loop range
    * Fix crash on "Consolidate Range" on MIDI tracks

Other Bug fixes
===========

    * Fix note snapping so that we snap to the note we're over
    * Fix various MIDI keybindings that were lost previously in a regression
    * Setup fader for audio/MIDI when its position in the processoing
chain is altered
    * Reconfigure processing chain appropriately when setting up a peak meter
    * Update fader curves when xfade length changes
    * Fix thinko bug with dragging one of the >1 tabs in the same route group
    * Stop session range location being removed on clear-ranges
    * Do not move the initial tempo / meter changes at 0 time when
inserting time
    * Snap new automation points in AutomationRegionViews
    * Don't create new regions on clicks on MIDI plugin automation tracks
    * Set up ControlUI::combo_map correctly to fix drop-down boxes in
generated plugin UIs (#4221). Based on work by jeremybub.
    * Delete RouteUI immediately on request, rather than in an idle loop
    * Don't allow non-movable meter / tempo markers to be dragged
    * Don't draw MIDI note horizontal grid lines if they would be less
than 3 pixels apart
    * Load the tempo map before the locations so that locations can
compute their BBT positions correctly
    * Clear clicks on locating for a seamless loop so that they don't stop
    * Fix default disk_io_chunk_frames for diskstream so that it isn't
larger than the default playback buffer size
    * Make it possible for undo records to contain details for
crossfades that are later deleted
    * Fix adding of automation points to regions with a non-zero start
    * Check inodes before reporting ambigious files (to avoid seeing
symlinks twice)
    * Fix interaction with JACK latency API
    * Handle scroll events on track header meters
    * Hide/ignore inputs on a plugin if the previous processing
element doesn't provide any data for them
    * Make management of MIDI ports thread-safe
    * Various fixes to Mackie/Logic Control support
    * Fix a search/replace bug in TOC/CUE generation
    * Fix problems with selecting control points in
AutomationRegionViews with non-zero region start.
    * fix ghost note position on non-zero-start regions
    * Remove erroneous check that would prevent notes being put at
pitch 0 or 127
    * Clear selected MIDI notes in all regions when they are cleared
in a single one
    * Stop MidiRegionView claiming PrimaryModifier-scrollwheel so that
zoom still works when MIDI notes are selected
    * Make phone-home option default to False even for non-debug builds
    * Fix visibility of MIDI CC automation lanes
    * New Emu Xboard 61 binding map from mcgruff
    * Patch from colinf to disallow colons in snapshot names for
compatibility with FAT filesystems
    * Adjust send faders depending on what signal type they are passing
    * Make MIDI sends work.
    * Improve plugin hide logic to prevent crashes when trying to
insert fully audio plugins into MIDI tracks.
    * Save marker selection state in instant.xml
    * Fix crossfade construction
    * More robust plugin I/O mapping.
    * Cope with drags of selections that include regions on hidden tracks
    * Fix check on dragging MIDI notes to a point before the region position.
    * Fix snap of note drags when the region position is not itself
snapped to the grid
    * Allow status bar components to be individually shown / hidden.
    * Don't offer the monitor buss to export from
    * Don't resort routes at every step during a session's
construction; can dramatically speed up loading of big sessions.
    * Use shared_ptr for Port in the AudioEngine; improves
thread-safety of the audio engine's port list as a writer cannot
destroy a port in one thread while the port list is being iterated in
another.
    * Reload meters in the right place even if they are set to a custom position
    * Fix left-over Panner and related objects after session close
    * Change internal API used by native VST support to read/write
info files, so that users can generate .fsi files in ~/.fst if is not
writable by them
    * Fix compensation of roll delay with MIDI tracks; data should be
obtained from playback_sample, not transport_frame
    * Reverse the order of vertical tabs when they are on the right
hand side so that from top to bottom it is the same order as that from
left to right for the top tabs.
    * Fix bleed of signals between tracks/busses caused by disabled plugins
    * Allocate some thread-local buffers for the GUI thread so that
the Plugin analysis stuff works again
    * Make it impossible to create MIDI tape tracks
    * Do a topological sort of the route list before passing it to the
graph, as the graph's feedback detection algorithm depends on the
input route list being sorted in such a way.
    * Fix naming / numbering of new MIDI tracks
    * Attempt to fix some confusions caused by bundles containing
different types of ports
    * Fix master bus mute button
    * Use home-grown solution for path_expand(), rather than wordexp()
which is broken in different ways on different platforms
    * Fix nasty off by one error that lead to the creation of 1 sample
xfades where there should be none
    * Fix incorrect buffer status reports when using MIDI tracks.
    * Find export presets correctly.
    * Open route group dialogue on Ctrl-right-click rather than
Ctrl-left-click on a group tab to be more consistent with the rest of
Ardour.
    * Save custom meter position so that it can be restored if the
metering point is set to something else and then back to custom again

Build Changes
==========

    * Don't build tranzport support unless it was asked for (it
doesn't work anyway)
    * Remove LV2 support via SLV2 (Lilv only now).
    * Comment out soundtouch-related configuration checks

Translations
=========

    * Updated Italian translation from Raffaele Morelli
    * Updated Russian translation from Alexandre Prokoudine
    * New Norwegian translation from Eivind Ødegård

Contributors
=========

mike start, mcgruff, david robillard, colinf, roy vegard, jeremy bub,
carl hetherington, todd naugle, acolom, joern nettingsmeier, paul
davis