[Ardour-Users] Ardour 4.0 released

[Robin Gareus]

On 04/19/2015 08:10 PM, Joe Hartley wrote:
> 
>> > The biggest changes in this release:
>> > 
>> >    - JACK is no longer required, making it easier than ever for new users
>> >    to get Ardour up and running (though JACK is still usable with Ardour).
>
> Is it correct to say that on Linux, it's still prefered to run under JACK?

yes it is.


Although really it's neither here nor there.

The Ardour/ALSA backend allows to calibrate midi port latencies (neither
jackd1, nor jackd2 currently offers that; I tried to port it to jack2,
but exposing the controls is hard).

Other than that, it's pretty much identical to recent jack sans jack :)

One additional bonus: It can mitigate issues with various jack versions
out there. e.g. systems with older jack2 (1.9.10, freewheeling bug), the
ALSA backend will not hang on export. It can also do dbus-device
reservation (jack1 currently does not support that).

That being said, JACK rocks and ardour-jack support won't go away.

If you don't have need for jack (external routing, transport sync, etc),
using the ALSA backend makes life a bit simpler and it's a tiny tiny bit
more efficient (one less context switch).

best,
robin