Ardour 6.3 Open-Source DAW Released with New Loudness Analysis Feature

Ardour 6.3

Ardour 6.3 open-source digital audio workstation (DAW) has been released as the second maintenance update since the release of the major Ardour 6.0 series with various improvements and some new features.

The biggest change in Ardour 6.3 is a new Loudness Analyzer & Normalizer feature designed to normalize the loudness by analyzing and calculating the Loudness (LUFS) of a session or a range selection and adding a gain-stage to the master-bus.

It also includes a “Conformity Check” for various common distribution targets, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Digital Peak, YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, and CD. The Loudness Analyzer & Normalizer feature can be accessed from Preferences > Mixer > Master.

For Linux users, Ardour 6.3 introduces AVX-optimized metering code, while for ARM platforms it brings Neon-optimized metering code. It also enables users to expand and contract the height of the track by double clicking on track header in Editor view, which now only shows the track name for inactive tracks.

There’s also support for SoundTouch for vocal time stretching as a compile-time option, new MIDI binding maps for AKAI MPK249 and Arturia Minilab Mk II control surfaces, crossfade and A/B plugins, a new dark theme theme called Recbox.

Being a maintenance update, Ardoud 6.3 comes with lots of improvements. Among these, there’s a graphical interface for setting the position of foldback busses to pre-fader or post-fader, the former being the default now, the ability to manually resize the name and path columns in editor source list, and faster MIDI file loading.

Moreover, the slider controller has been updated to accept dB when controlling gain, non-automatable VST parameters are no longer included in the list of automatable parameters, and Ardoud no longer automatically saves your project when importing a video stream. More details on the changes are available here.

Ardour 6.3 is the second point release in the major Ardour 6.0 series, coming two months after Ardoud 6.2 since there wasn’t an Ardoud 6.1 release. The source tarball is available for download right now from the official website, but I recommend that you update from the stable repos of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution.

Image: Ardour

Last updated 4 years ago

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