[Ardour-Users] Ardour 4.1 released

[Paul Davis]

 The Ardour project is pleased to announce the release of 4.1. This release
contains several new features, both internally and in the user interface,
and a slew of bug fixes worthy of your attention. Encouragingly, we also
have one of our longest ever contributor lists for this release.

We had hoped to be on a roughly monthly release cycle after the release of
4.0, but collaborations with other organizations delayed 4.1 by nearly a
month. Hopefully, we will release 4.2 before the end of July.

As usual, it can be found at

   http://ardour.org/download
New Functionality Input Gain Control Ardour's mixer now includes an input
gain control. In tracks, it is positioned after the signal flow to/from
disk, and so affects the signal heard both when recording and during
playback. It can be found in the mixer strip, near the top (honoring the
top-to-bottom visual and signal flow).
Playback- or Capture-only device support for ALSA & Coreaudio It is now
possible to use Ardour's native audio/midi backends for Linux and OS X with
devices that only provide playback or capture, but not both. This can be
useful, for example, when editing using a pair of USB headphones, where
recording is not required.
Save AsArdour finally offers "real Save As", which will allow you to save
the current session to a new location on disk. Several options are
available, notably whether or not to copy all the audio/MIDI files to the
new location or share them with the existing session. It is also possible
to create an empty version of the current session this way. "Rename" now
also works more reliably.

The operation named "Save As" in previous versions has been retitled
"Snapshot (& switch to new version)". Regular snapshotting continues to be
available as "Snapshot (& keep working on current version)"
Windows assembler metering support. Metering is one of the most
CPU-intensive operations done by Ardour, second only to running plugins. On
Linux and OS X, this has been done using hand-written assembler code (more
or less the lowest level of programming language that exists). Ardour 4.1
now has similar code for Windows, thanks to Grygorii Zharun of Waves
Audio. User
Interface Changes Waveform rendering Waveform rendering has been
dramatically sped up. In addition, the user interface no longer waits for
the images of waveforms to be drawn, but can continue operations while they
are generated in the background. This dramatically speeds up scrolling,
both vertically and horizontally, though you may see brief intervals of
time when specific regions are shown without a waveform. It will appear
very quickly, normally just a fraction of a second.
Stationary playhead option Activated via the main menu's Transport
submenu..
Layering: later is higher Ardour 2 contained several different models for
layering overlapping regions, which Ardour 3 simplified down to just one,
most easily termed "manual layering". Ardour 4.1 sees the return of one of
the additional layering modes, "later is higher", which puts regions with
later start positions higher. No layering model is perfect for every
workflow, but we hope that the return of this one will be useful for many
relatively common ways of working.
hi-DPI support, part one People on all platforms with high resolution
displays (e.g. Retina on OS X) will now find far fewer "ugly" icons and
text in the user interface. The support will scale up to any sized display.
hi-DPI support, part twoLinux and Windows users have always been able to
use the font-scaling control to scale almost a lot of the GUI to their own
personal preference. This has now been extended by making many elements of
the GUI size themselves using the chosen font size as a reference, rather
than absolute pixels, allowing it to work as you would expect even on
hi-DPI displays.

OS X users with Retina don't have this option, but the GUI will still
automatically display appropriately for their hi-DPI display.
Relative snap this makes it possible to move objects around without
changing their relationship to the grid. It is activated by using a
keyboard modifier while dragging, which defaults to: Linux/Windows:
Alt-Window OS X: Shift-Option. The modifier can be changed in the
Preferences dialog (User Interaction tab)
X-run counter in status bar For those who don't know, "x-run" is a term
that stands for "overrun or underrun", which describes a condition where
the computer fails to keep up with the flow of information required by the
audio interface. An overrun is where the computer fails to read incoming
audio fast enough; an underrun is where the computer fails to deliver audio
fast enough. You should ideally never see any x-runs on a properly
configured system, but we don't all live in an ideal world.
Plugin parameter reset button In a generic plugin GUI, Ardour now shows a
button that will reset all plugin parameters back to their default value
(as best as the default can be determined).
Allow deletion of MIDI Program Changes using the Delete keyPeak meters now
have sample-accurate fall-off, no visual jitterAutomation-lane log-scale
parameter supportNew 0dBFS peak meter
Tap tempo When editing or adding a tempo, the dialog now offers the chance
to tap the tempo you want to use. Remove time This editing operation
removes silence and audio from the edit point, and then moves later
material earlier. It can optionally move markers, tempo and meter points
etc. as well. Fixes No more x-runs & noise on session-open/closeNote: JACK
1 users may still experience occasional noise during session open.
Fix stuck midi notes during save/auto-save Fix stuck midi notes if
loop-range is present
Various MCP improvements & tweaks

   - panner width behaviour fixed
   - Control key puts v-pot into "fine" mode
   - Clean up profile editor to remove things that don't/can't work
   - Add an option for the MCP .device file to set the master position
   - Allow the removal of key bindings in the profile editor


Properly display JACK buffersize When jackd is already running, the
Audio/Midi Setup dialog now displays the current buffersize correctly
(previously it always showed 1024).
Fix importing old A2/A3 automation Fix Non Session Manager support
VST plugins are now searched for using a case insensitive comparison of
their filename extensionThis matters when plugins are on filesystems that
are case-sensitive
Relax gain/fader LPF to 25Hz (was 10Hz)Gain changes now happen faster. Most
people won't hear the difference, but trained audio engineers will know
what to look for.
Fix monitor-section polarity invert Fix crash when switching backends.
Developers

Robin Gareus, Paul Davis, Nick Mainsbridge, Colin Fletcher, John Emmas, Ben
Loftis, Len Ovens, Tim Mayberry, David Robillard, Johannes Mueller,
Grygorii Zharun, Valeriy Kamyshniy, Nils Philippsen, A. Hellquist, Nimal
Ratnayake.

Czech translation update (Pavel Frich). Axiom 61 midi map (Edgar
Aichinger).
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