Ardour 2.0 Digital Audio Workstation Released

The developers of Ardour are happy to announce the release of version 2.0 of the award winning digital audio workstation. Ardour transforms any computer running Linux or OS X into a tool to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can produce CDs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Version 2.0 is available as an OS X (10.4) universal package and also as source code. Linux distributions will have prebuilt binaries available in the near future.

Nearly 2 years of work have gone into this new version. Along the way a huge number of bugs were fixed, performance and workflow were improved, and many new features were added.

Highlights of version 2.0 compared to the last stable release (0.99) include:

• New user interface featuring:
• • More accessible menus
  • Improved overall GUI design
  • Instant accelerator key rebinding direct from menus
• Destructive recording ("dubbing") capabilities (as used by the new Harrison Xdubber)
• Undo/redo across program startup/shutdown
• Redesigned and more stable support for VST
• Support for 24 bit integer native files in addition to 32-bit float as in 0.99
• Modular support for hardware control surfaces, including the Frontier Designs Tranzport and Mackie Control Protocol devices

In addition there are literally hundreds of minor fixes and smaller features that have accumulated during the work on 2.0. This new version is fully backward-compatible with older releases of Ardour, and can be installed in parallel with them. Please note that older versions cannot load sessions saved by Ardour 2.0.

With the release of 2.0, the project's development will accelerate as it returns to focusing on major features and workflow. The developers also look forward to the results of this summer's Google Summer of Code projects involving MIDI editing and surround panning, and expect to release version 2.1 within a few months, containing new features that have been under development but were not merged into this release.

Ardour is available for free download from the ardour.org website. We encourage users to support the development of the software through subscriptions and donations. The software itself is available free of charge.