The popular open-source digital audio workstation software Ardour released new major 7.0 this weekend with exciting new features!
Ardour 7.0 features clip launching system that was firstly found in Ableton Live. It allows to experiment with combinations of various loops and one shot samples, with all sound appropriately time-stretched.
You can build automated sequences with controlled randomness, using follow options: Forward, Reverse, Jump and Multi-Jump.
…MIDI clips in Ardour can have 16 MIDI channels, and every clip can have its own patches (sounds) assigned. You can use multi-timbral MIDI files for various effects, including layering or “true flams”
The release also introduced a new download system to access Gigabytes of additional audio / MIDI loops. On the Clips tab of both Cues and Edit page, it comes preloaded with 8000+ MIDI chords, 5000+ MIDI chord progressions and 4800+ MIDI drum grooves free for use.
User may also add MIDI loops and samples folder by drag and dropping to the tab. Or, get even more from looperman.com.
The 7.0 release also allows users to launch clips in a “linear” workflow style to Live, Bitwig and others, to sequence them from the timeline; It now has 3 “ripple editing” modes. They are Ripple Selected that ripple all selected tracks after deleting a region or time range; Ripple All in response to range deletion; and Interview that rippling will only occur if more than one track is selected.
Other changes include:
- Mixer scenes to quickly store/restore all automatable settings
- New keyboard bindings for note length control
- Toolbar menu to explicitly select note-length, channel and velocity.
- Stem exports for MIDI tracks
- Update code to support Freesound again.
- Support for I/O plugins
- New themes: “DieHard3” from GMaq (avlinux), “Xcolors” from LAM.
- Support for opaque MIDI Regions
- Add API to control selection by RID.
- Support for iCon Platform M+ and iCon QCon ProG2 controller.
- Add midi maps for Akai mpk225.
- Add MIDI MAP for Alesis Q49 V2 master keyboard.
Get Ardour 7.0
This release also include lots of other changes, see the release note below:
For Linux users, besides the official .run installer there’s also universal Flatpak package though not updated at the moment of writing.
And Ubuntu / Linux Mint users may also keep an eye on either Ubuntu Studio PPA or Rob Savoury’s multimedia PPA.