If you’re used to the noise of “big” DAWs you may have let the likes of Ardour, an open-source piece of music production software, pass you by. Maybe now the company has announced version eight of their pride and joy, it’s time to take a closer look.
Updated in early October, standout new features include adding a dedicated ruler to define arrangement sections, MIDI track piano roll header, Launchpad Pro support, Quick Groups, Region Grouping, freehand automation drawing, updated tempo mapping, a seamless way for macOS users to install Ardour, plus MIDI Arpeggiator plugins.
Novation LaunchPad Pro support is an interesting one. Although this device and others like it have always been able to integrate to some extent with any DAW, they’ve always been touted as Ableton Live companions. Apple added more native support for these kinds of grid controllers in later versions of Logic, and now Ardour has done the same.
Ardour 8 features full support for just about every feature of the LP Pro’s “Session” mode, like Ableton Live. You can use it to trigger clips and cues, but also control gain levels, panning and send levels for tracks & busses.
One interesting thing to note: unlike the Ableton Push 2, the LaunchPad Pro actually has “brains”. Besides “Session” mode (which is controlled by the DAW), there are 3 other modes you can use: “Note”, “Chord” and “Sequencer” all of which function without any involvement by the DAW. The LaunchPad Pro has its own fairly sophisticated MIDI recorder/sequencer, and the Chord mode can be used to build up progressions in an easy to perform way. The modes work with Ardour just as they would in any other DAW, and you can find fairly good documentation on them in the LaunchPad Pro manual.
Ardour hopes to add support for the Launchpad Mini and LaunchPad X soon.
Read the full press release.
