Ardour 7.4 Open-Source DAW Released with Support for MIDI Subgroup Busses

This release updates the Lua DSP processor with the ability to downmix 5.1 sound to stereo.
Ardour 7.4

Ardour 7.4 open-source, free, and cross-platform digital audio workstation (DAW) software is now available for download as another update in the Ardour 7.x series that brings some new features, improvements, and lots of bug fixes.

Ardour 7.4 is here after more than two months after Ardour 7.3 and introduces support for MIDI subgroup busses, support for the Lua DSP processor to downmix 5.1 audio to stereo, a volume control to the clip picker, a new option that lets you use a neutral color for new tracks and busses, and a new preference item for the PPQN value in exported MIDI files.

Controller support has been updated for the FaderPort 8 controller to show parameter values as formatted by the plugin and no longer duplicate makeup control, the X-Touch controller to show track colors, and the Ableton Push 2 controller to send modulation when holding Shift while using the touch strip instead of a pitch bend.

This release also updates the VST3 plugin support to correctly configure stereo plugins on mono tracks, skip redundant parameter changes, notify users when plugin parameter names change, update parameter and bus names on the plugin’s request, as well as to match a plugin’s speaker arrangement with its pin output.

VST2 plugin support was improved as well by addressing a crash that occurred when dragging VST2 presets from the sidebar to a track. Moreover, Ardour 7.4 improves naming and tooltips for the color palette and improves the MIDI input-follows-selection behavior to obey the selection property on track groups.

On top of that, Ardour now allows you to disconnect all plugin pins, hides the plugin properties that are marked as “invisible” in the generic plugin GUI, and adds support for custom channel count to ask about the number of channels when adding an audio track or bus rather than starting with 0.

As usual, various bugs were addressed in this release to make your Ardour experience more stable and reliable. For more details, check out the release notes. You can download Ardour 7.4 from the official website as a source tarball that you’ll have to manually compile on your GNU/Linux distribution.

Image credits: Ardour/Paul Davis

Last updated 12 months ago

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