Ardour 5.0 released

[scalawag]

Seriously folks - you don't expect to run AudioUnits on Windows - why are you expecting to run Windows VSTs on Linux?

Easy: because the "best" plugins are VST and not LV2
But i think things are changing a little bit.

[mr.ardour]

It is definitely changing. But more importantly, Ardour supports Linux VST plugins on Linux. There are more and more plugin makes realizing that they can do this. Even U-he is, albeit still in beta testing (and still with some notable design issues in how the port has been done). I completely understand that plugin makers may choose not to learn yet another plugin API. But to make their plugins work on Linux, they don't have to do this.

[Karma_tba]

YAAWWNN..........

[Robert Randolph]

Seriously folks - you don't expect to run AudioUnits on Windows - why are you expecting to run Windows VSTs on Linux?

It's not so much 'expect' as 'want' for most folks.

There's so many good Windows VSTs out there that it makes switching to another platform scary for folks that rely on them.

[mr.ardour]

They don't have to switch. Nobody is advocating that you move to Linux "just because". If you're committed to a set of Windows VST plugins, continue to use them on Windows. The only difference is that now you can easily get Ardour for that paltform and use it as a host

[Robert Randolph]

They don't have to switch. Nobody is advocating that you move to Linux "just because". If you're committed to a set of Windows VST plugins, continue to use them on Windows. The only difference is that now you can easily get Ardour for that paltform and use it as a host

I totally agree with you, I'm just explaining that the general sentiment is 'want', not really 'expect'. That's all.

Ardour is looking great btw. You and your contributors are doing fantastic work.

[LawrenceF]

The scripting interface is nice. It still continues to puzzle me why so few workstations do that given the really obvious advantages.

Case 1: Make an FR and wait, and hope.
Case 2: Do it yourself or get it from somebody else.

Easy choice.

P.S. I'm still of the mind that Ardour has what might arguably be the best mixer design, architecturally speaking, on the market. Take 10 minutes and explore the entire mix console and you'll see what are tons of pending FR's from almost every major daw. And they just made it better with VCA's and other stuff.

I'm not a fan of actually using the product for other unrelated reasons, but the console design is truly outstanding.

[woggle]

The scripting interface is nice. It still continues to puzzle me why so few workstations do that given the really obvious advantages.

I quickly contrasted the scripting with Reaper (and Falcon) - have you done that? It seems so much easier than hooking Lua into Reaper, but maybe I am missing something

[tooneba]

Is it free? wow

[LawrenceF]

I quickly contrasted the scripting with Reaper (and Falcon) - have you done that? It seems so much easier than hooking Lua into Reaper, but maybe I am missing something

Not sure tbh. The object model or API, the way the things I've played with so far are defined or setup there, seemed a little easier to initially grasp to me, yes. I doubt if it's as extensive as Reaper's API though so "easier" (or that initial perception) is maybe kinda relative to that. Reaper's API is pretty deep.

I mean... Lua is Lua ... but yes, things can be more or less subjectively complex depending on how the API and all that is setup, how easy or not it is to control or address objects and properties, and what I see in Ardour looks pretty logical and easy enough to grasp.

[woggle]

I quickly contrasted the scripting with Reaper (and Falcon) - have you done that? It seems so much easier than hooking Lua into Reaper, but maybe I am missing something

Not sure tbh. The object model or API, the way the things I've played with so far are defined or setup there, seemed a little easier to initially grasp to me, yes. I doubt if it's as extensive as Reaper's API though so "easier" (or that initial perception) is maybe kinda relative to that. Reaper's API is pretty deep.

I mean... Lua is Lua ... but yes, things can be more or less subjectively complex depending on how the API and all that is setup, how easy or not it is to control or address objects and properties, and what I see in Ardour looks pretty logical and easy enough to grasp.

thanks for that explanation - yeah that is pretty much how it looked to me, way easier to hook in

[Xenakios]

It seems so much easier than hooking Lua into Reaper, but maybe I am missing something

The problem with Reaper's scripting is that it pretty much directly just maps Reaper's low level C-language based API into the scripting languages. C of course doesn't do things like automatic memory management, easy-to-use objects and so on, so using the API doesn't feel so "natural" with the scripting languages. Those things could however be added for example for the Lua scripting. (I did some proof-of-concept work on that but it would be a LOT of work to convert everything in the Reaper API to work like that.)

Anyway, this thread was supposed to be about the new Ardour release. Maybe it would be useful to start another thread about DAW application (and maybe even plugin) scripting?

[mr.ardour]

Actually, in Ardour's case the argument for scripting is significantly diminished by the fact that you can change ANYTHING you want to because of its open source nature. Just last night, someone submitted a patch that provided a single-action way to enable/disable both punch in and out, rather than having two separate actions for them (in the GUI).

There seems to be a relatively large number of people who are willing to write extremely complex scripts to do something, but who do not want to have to have the build stack and tools installed to allow them to do this directly in the source. Perhaps some of them find Lua (or Python or Javascript or whatever) to have an acceptable learning curve, versus C++.

The main reason to add scripting to Ardour is not to make it possible for other people to change the functionality of the program - this has always been possible and is one way that we get brand new features (the first "other person" to work on Ardour just showed up one day with a huge patch to provide zoom-via-mouse-scroll, back in 2000). It is to open the door to people who, forever whatever reason, do not want to or cannot deal with actually rebuilding the program as part of their development process.

[LawrenceF]

Actually, in Ardour's case the argument for scripting is significantly diminished by the fact that you can change ANYTHING you want to because of its open source nature.

We'll politely disagree here. The value of scripting is accessibility, or greater accessibility for the larger user base. C++, or learning C++ well enough to modify an open source daw is no small task and by nature will be far beyond the skill set of 99.9% of your user base. A more accurate way to express what you said above is...

"Anyone who is skilled enough with coding in C++ can change anything they want."

... which is, relative to the user base of any daw, a rather tiny group.

[resynthesis]

Scripting is also portable compared to source mods. It's useful because (I assume) it's possible to move the scripts to another machine easily e.g. if I'm visiting a collaborator and I'm used to a set of actions and keybindings.