The Ardour project has released Ardour 4.0 – the latest version of the open source DAW for Mac & Linux. (No official release is available yet for Windows)
This release brings many technical improvements, as well as new features and over a thousand bug fixes.
The biggest changes in this release:
- Better cross platform support. Ardour now runs on GNU/Linux, OS X and for the first time, Windows.
- JACK is no longer required, making it easier than ever for new users to get Ardour up and running (though JACK is still usable with Ardour).
- The user interface has seen a thorough overhaul, leading to a more modern and polished experience.
See the Ardour site for details.
no more ‘free speech’ btw 🙁
A tad on the side, but how is the support for vst on Linux? I see NI supports Linux, but do devs have to make special Linux-vst versions? Now that Bitwig also is a great option on Linux, Linux is starting to become a good alternative to Windows and Mac.
Yeah, they have to build a linux version specifically. I’m yet to find any linux-vst s though. Nearly all the plugins are LV2, which is just as good a format. In fact Calf and Invada (unsure about the name there) have a whole range of plugins like compressors, filters, eqs, convolution reverbs, which are great quality and free.
Bitwig is a great option. It’s not really competing with Ardour though, as Ardour is free to use and is more of a Pro-Tools like program while Bitwig is a $300 program aimed at electronic music. Different markets IMO, often you could regularly use both.
There are a few native Linux VSTs. E.g. the free plugins from TAL, drowaudio, a few synths like Dexed, Obxd, etc. Commercially, there are VSTs from e.g. discoDSP, Loomer.
But there are so many good LV2 plugins these days, that this is not really an issue, unless you want a specific plugins, that is only available as a Windows VSt, but them you can still try to use one of the existing bridging technologies.
Go go open source. Looking really great too! Congrats to the Ardour team. I will definitely be reinvestigating.