[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

[John Rigg]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 06:05:58PM +0100, Adriano Petrosillo wrote:
> I've been following Ardour development for a few years now. I remember
> trying to use it, for the first time, 2 years ago for a demo project, then
> the lack of MIDI (I'm in an electro-rock band) forced me to look elsewhere,
> even though I really wanted to like and use Ardour.
> 
> In the end, I moved on to Reaper on Windows, which I must say, it's a very
> capable piece of software. The GUI is clear and no-nonsense, yet
> functional, routing is easy and powerful, and their idea of flexible tracks
> (as opposed to separating tracks from buses) is great. In the meantime, I
> must say that I really started to appreciate the plethora of plugins
> available on Windows (even though, it must be said, there are countless
> "me-too" plugins which basically do the same thing, and lots of crap and
> bloat, really... but it's nice to have the choice), which sadly just isn't
> there on Linux. 

There are fewer plugin choices on Linux, but in the nearly 7 years that I've
been using Ardour the situation has improved considerably. There is still a
shortage of plugins that emulate analog non-linearity for those who like
plugin equivalents of specific hardware devices. I wanted a non-aliasing
transformer distortion emulator for example, but ended up writing my own.
The other thing I miss is a good drum replacement program. Apart from that
I've found enough plugins to cover my requirements. 

I personally find the lack of fancy graphic interfaces on most of the
available LADSPA and LV2 plugins to be a positive advantage. I just want it
to work, preferably without too many arbitrary restrictions on parameter
ranges, and without the added distraction of pretty pictures which do nothing
to enhance the sound but do consume screen space that could be put to better
use (I realise I'm probably in a minority here).

John