Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Now in Beta

Posted by michael on from the love-of-music dept.

croddy writes "The first beta of the Ardour digital audio workstation has been released. A tarball is available at the Ardour project page on Sourceforge. Packagers are currently preparing binary releases for several major Linux distributions. Ardour is a professional-grade, low-latency, multi-track digital hard disk recording and mixing application designed to replace dedicated HDR systems, and software systems such as ProTools and Samplitude. It supports audio processing plugins via LADSPA. Although it is still a beta, the years of work and dedication by the Ardour development team are very much visible in this release."

2 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Re:replace protools ? by croddy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    this comes up every time.

    ardour will interface with any multi-channel pro-grade interface you throw at it (assuming it is ALSA supported).

    it was written with this interface (among others) in mind:

    RME Hammerfall DSP

    which is cheaper than a digidesign 888. compare the specs :-)

  2. it's an hdr/daw and jackd client by rtp405 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After about three years of testing Ardour it's great to see the beta release. I own a small commercial recording studio and am really looking forward to running Ardour and other linux applications fulltime. There's still work to be done but it's getting very close.

    Ardour is a jackd client. Jackd enables hardware and software port routing. So, application_a:output_N can be routed to application_b:input_N and on and on to the extent of your computing capabilities.

    In addition to routing, jackd also has transport syncronization functionality. The transport api is in beta but it's being actively developed. Earlier this morning I tested DM-24(digital mixer) MMC play instructions to Ardour(jack transport master) to Alsaplayer(jack transport slave) and Ardour-mtc:out to DM-24 for sync between Ardour and the mixing consol.

    In the middle of that chain I've got JAMin which is a jack client audio mastering application

    So, I hit play(dm-24) Ardour engages transport, Alsaplayer engages transport and sends its output to JAMin which in turn sends its output to Ardour where the mastered product is recorded. This is incredible stuff.

    My hat is off to the linux audio developer and user community.

    Next on the agenda, call my protools pals and invite them over for beer. :)