After more than a year of development, the release of the free sound editor Ardour 7.0 has been published, designed for multi-channel recording, processing and mixing sound. Ardor provides a multi-track timeline, an unlimited level of rollback throughout the file (even after the program is closed), support for a variety of hardware interfaces. The program is positioned as a free analogue of the professional tools ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix and Sequoia. The code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. Ready builds for Linux are available in Flatpak format.
Key improvements:
- The "Clip launching" mode has been implemented for creating looped compositions (loops), which provides means for composing a composition in real time through random arrangement of previously unordered fragments. A similar workflow is found in digital audio workstations such as Ableton Live, Bitwig, Digital Performer, and Logic. The new mode allows you to experiment with sound by combining different sound loops with single samples and adjusting the result to the overall rhythm.
You can trim or extend the effective length of clips, as well as set the number of repeats before invoking the transition parameter. To create auto-playing sequences, you can include random fills and use transition options such as fast forward and rewind, single and multiple jumps. Each looped clip can have up to 16 MIDI channels with its own set of assigned patches (sounds). The Ableton Push 2 controller can be used to manage queues.
- Added an interface for loading sound samples and MIDI material from additional loop libraries. Libraries can be accessed through the Clips tab offered on the right side of the Cues and Edit pages. The base set offers over 8000 ready-made MIDI chords, over 5000 MIDI progressions, and over 4800 drum rhythms. You can also add your own loops and import data from third-party collections such as looperman.com.
- Support for "Cue Markers" has been added, allowing for a more linear time-based sequencing process to be applied to compound clips.
- A new concept of internal representation of time has been implemented, based on the separate processing of sound and musical time. The change allowed to get rid of problems in determining the position and duration of different types of objects. For example, moving an object 4 bars now moves it exactly 4 bars and the next cue point moves exactly 4 bars instead of approximately 4 bars in terms of audio time.
- Three shift modes (ripple) are proposed, which determine actions with the void formed after the removal or cutting of material from the track. In the "Ripple Selected" mode, only selected tracks are shifted after deletion, in the "Ripple All" mode, all tracks are shifted, in the "Interview" mode, the shift is performed only if there is more than one selected track (for example, it can be used to cut inappropriate interjections in speech).
- Added support for mixer scenes, allowing you to quickly save and restore settings and plug-in parameters in the mixing window. You can create up to 8 scenes switched by F1…F8 keys, allowing you to quickly compare different mixing modes.
- Significantly expanded possibilities for editing music in MIDI format. Added a MIDI export mode that allows you to save each track to a separate SMF file.
- The ability to search and download sounds from the Freesound collection, which is about 600 thousand records in size, has been returned (to access the collection, you need an account in the Freesound service). Additional options include the ability to configure the size of the local cache and the ability to filter items by license type.
- Implemented support for I/O plugins that run outside the context of tracks or a bus and can be used, for example, to pre-process input, receive/send data over the network, or post-process output.
- Expanded support for sound controllers and consoles. Added support for iCon Platform M+, iCon Platform X+ and iCon QCon ProG2 MIDI controllers.
- Redesigned dialog for sound and MIDI settings.
- Official builds for Apple hardware with Apple Silicon ARM chips provided. Formation of official assemblies for 32-bit systems has been stopped (nightly assemblies continue to be published).
Source: opennet.ru