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Ardour 5 released

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Re: Ardour 5 released

#31

Post by jdietrich »

dawhead wrote: post #20
jdietrich wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that it's competitive with older versions of the major DAWs. It's reasonably stable and has a reasonably complete feature set. The problem for Ardour on Linux is the plugin ecosystem. Any serious DAW user has invested thousands of dollars in plugins, none of which will run on Linux. For Linux to be a serious platform for audio work, it needs much more than just a DAW; it needs samplers, synths, reverbs, dynam…

Every day, there are NEW DAW users who have no plugins. I think you're also not fully informed on the scale of existing plugin development on Linux. Several commercial developers now produce plugins for Linux, and there are some open source ones for many tasks that are actually outstanding. Noise removal/restoration is one particularly weak spot. Finally, Ardour doesn't run on just Linux. Anyone on OS X or Windows ca…

>Several commercial developers now produce plugins for Linux, and there are some open source ones for many tasks that are actually outstanding.

I've demoed a large number of open source or Linux-compatible plugins; with the exception of Pure Data and the Calf Studio plugins, they were uniformly awful. Pure Data is still substantially inferior to Reaktor. Last time I checked, the Calf Studio plugins weren't cross-platform and had considerable shortcomings compared to their proprietary equivalents.

A huge proportion of my bread-and-butter plugins have no Linux equivalent that is even remotely comparable: Kontakt, Vienna Symphonic Library, Omnisphere, Melodyne, Izotope Rx and Ozone, Bias FX, the UAD and Arturia emulations etc.

Producing music on Linux would be an exercise in frustration. The plugins available on Linux compare very badly to the bundled plugins that come with Logic or Cubase, let alone the whole market.

The very best open source plugins are mediocre at best. In many absolutely crucial categories, they are laughably bad - compare Freeverb3 with Vienna MIR or Altiverb, for example.

Re: Ardour 5 released

#32

Post by dawhead »

jdietrich wrote: post #31
dawhead wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every day, there are NEW DAW users who have no plugins. I think you're also not fully informed on the scale of existing plugin development on Linux. Several commercial developers now produce plugins for Linux, and there are some open source ones for many tasks that are actually outstanding. Noise removal/restoration is one particularly weak spot. Finally, Ardour doesn't run on just Linux. Anyone on OS X or Windows ca…

>Several commercial developers now produce plugins for Linux, and there are some open source ones for many tasks that are actually outstanding. I've demoed a large number of open source or Linux-compatible plugins; with the exception of Pure Data and the Calf Studio plugins, they were uniformly awful. Pure Data is still substantially inferior to Reaktor. Last time I checked, the Calf Studio plugins weren't cross-plat…

Pianoteq ? U-he ? Distrho? Harrison Consoles ? These are all proprietary plugins for Linux, all of them excellent.

PureData is a VERY VERY different program from Reaktor, capable of things not possible in Reaktor, but also with a totally different work flow and interaction model. There are many PD users who would absolutely disagree with your characterization.

My point was not to say "The plugin situation on Linux is totally comparable to the one of OS X or Windows", indeed far from it. But your post suggested that there's no signs of life at all there, and this just isn't true.

You also seem very focused on a style of music production that is really built around plugins. This is common today, but far from universal. I know many studio owners in the USA and Europe who use plugins very minimally, because they focus on recording performing musicians.

As I've said many times, if you have a workflow that is tightly bound with platform-specific plugins, you should stay on that platform. With this release of Ardour, people are now free to consider using Ardour on that platform. That is all.

Re: Ardour 5 released

#33

Post by dawhead »

spacelizard wrote: post #30
RIMR wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just build your own binary if you don't want to pay. You can't really complain when they're giving the source code to you for free.

Yes you can, but that's beside the point. For a complicated application like this there obviously is value in both the source code and the pre-built binaries. I think people would be a little less annoyed if this didn't seem to be copping sales techniques from sketchy outdated proprietary business models (Prices not posted up front? Free version has time limitations??) and instead did something that was more sustaina…

There is no price "up front" because you get to define the price (the model is taken from Radiohead's release of "In Rainbows", actually). What non-sketchy model do you have for a demo version? We used to make one that simply didn't save your plugin settings, but then realized that users could accidentally destroy an existing session like this. So we switched to "silence after 10 mins; ask for more time; silence after 5 mins; ask for more; silence after 2 mins; ask for more; silence after 1 min; ad infinitum". If you've got a better for how to create a demo copy that has some incentive for the user to change to the full one, I'm all ears.

And as you note, you don't know what the "something that was more sustainable is", whereas I've been doing this for 16 years, and have been through almost every "how to make money with open source" idea that there is. The vast majority don't apply to niche software, even on the odd occasion that they work for some other things.

I've made a living (of some kind) from working on Ardour for nearly 8 years now, and worked on it without need of income for 8 years before that. I think i'm

Re: Ardour 5 released

#34

Post by fit2rule »

dawhead wrote: post #20
jdietrich wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that it's competitive with older versions of the major DAWs. It's reasonably stable and has a reasonably complete feature set. The problem for Ardour on Linux is the plugin ecosystem. Any serious DAW user has invested thousands of dollars in plugins, none of which will run on Linux. For Linux to be a serious platform for audio work, it needs much more than just a DAW; it needs samplers, synths, reverbs, dynam…

Every day, there are NEW DAW users who have no plugins. I think you're also not fully informed on the scale of existing plugin development on Linux. Several commercial developers now produce plugins for Linux, and there are some open source ones for many tasks that are actually outstanding. Noise removal/restoration is one particularly weak spot. Finally, Ardour doesn't run on just Linux. Anyone on OS X or Windows ca…

I concur - been using DAW's for decades now, and Ardour out of the box on a newly installed Ubuntu Studio-based system has tons, and tons of plugins - there isn't a single category of plugin in the OP's list that isn't available. You just have to not shop for them, and rather look in the repository, because they're there ..

Re: Ardour 5 released

#35

Post by s_kilk »

roel_v wrote: post #4

Is there anyone on here who uses DAW's seriously, and has tried Ardour? Can it compete with the big boys?

Eh, it's pretty good, but as another commentor noted, Ardour has tended to lag behind other DAWs.

For example: Ardour didn't get full Midi support until 2013, approximately twenty years after Pro Tools 1.0 launched with MIDI support from the start.

Re: Ardour 5 released

#36

Post by spacelizard »

dawhead wrote: post #33
spacelizard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can, but that's beside the point. For a complicated application like this there obviously is value in both the source code and the pre-built binaries. I think people would be a little less annoyed if this didn't seem to be copping sales techniques from sketchy outdated proprietary business models (Prices not posted up front? Free version has time limitations??) and instead did something that was more sustaina…

There is no price "up front" because you get to define the price (the model is taken from Radiohead's release of "In Rainbows", actually). What non-sketchy model do you have for a demo version? We used to make one that simply didn't save your plugin settings, but then realized that users could accidentally destroy an existing session like this. So we switched to "silence after 10 mins; ask for more time; silence afte…

Personally as a fellow free software developer, I take whatever opportunities I can to look closer at what value the software is really providing for the user. Is your primary user actually interested in the freedom and community the software provides, or are they just looking for "Pro Tools on GNU/Linux" with a low price tag? It's probably a combination of the two for most users, and as you have found there is tons of tweaking that can be done to optimize for the middle-ground. I personally choose to lean more towards optimizing for freedom and community, but the downside to this is it requires more infrastructure to support it.

From the download page it looks like your anchor point is a one-time $45 for unlimited upgrades. This is already fairly cheap for DAW software, but I would be interested to know which of your pricing options actually does generate the most revenue. That would probably give you clues as to how to build a stronger free (gratis) version that doesn't reduce overall value for the user. Subscriptions being popular means you can probably consider paid add-ons and services. User wants to use proprietary plugins? It's added maintenance costs, make them pay for it. One-time purchases being popular means you probably need to pursue sponsorships. Unfortunately I don't know a good way to do this at scale without either A) embedding obnoxious advertising, or B) finding generous corporate benefactors. Everyone obviously wants option B and option A sucks for everybody. Whoever can find the equilibrium in between these will get rich.

I also want to add that I tremendously respect what you're doing and how far you've come, and that I probably would not be a musician if Ardour did not exist :)

Re: Ardour 5 released

#37

Post by nomanisanisland »

dawhead wrote: post #22
spriggan3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there anyone on here who uses DAW's seriously, and has tried Ardour? Can it compete with the big boys? Can it compete? Yes, a DAW hardly decides what the final result sounds like. The problem is integration. Often controllers come with presets for Pro-tools,Logic, Cubase, Live so integration is seamless, there is virtually no need for configuration. Now Is Ardour popular ? right now not that much. But it's a gre…

Ardour has builtin support for many hardware controllers. Our support for Mackie Control is as good as anything in the proprietary world, ditto for things like the FaderPort. Generic MIDI controllers can have MIDI maps, and we have at least a dozen predefined ones already. Ardour 5.1 will also see support for the Ableton Push 2 device. Popularity: right now, someone starts a bundle of Ardour obtained from ardour.org…

>Ardour 5.1 will also see support for the Ableton Push 2 device.

that's goddamn great. Keep up the awesome work, this program is a masterpiece

Re: Ardour 5 released

#38

Post by Joeboy »

fit2rule wrote: post #34
dawhead wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every day, there are NEW DAW users who have no plugins. I think you're also not fully informed on the scale of existing plugin development on Linux. Several commercial developers now produce plugins for Linux, and there are some open source ones for many tasks that are actually outstanding. Noise removal/restoration is one particularly weak spot. Finally, Ardour doesn't run on just Linux. Anyone on OS X or Windows ca…

I concur - been using DAW's for decades now, and Ardour out of the box on a newly installed Ubuntu Studio-based system has tons, and tons of plugins - there isn't a single category of plugin in the OP's list that isn't available. You just have to not shop for them, and rather look in the repository, because they're there ..

This is a Free Software antipattern. Yes, there are things that exist that claim to do the same thing as commercial software. No, that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually functional replacements for that software.

I mean some of them are, but there's no sampler that will painlessly play modern sample packs, no usable pitch correction, nothing a tenth as good at noise reduction / audio restoration as Izotope RX.

Also, maybe a violin is as good as a guitar, but you can't hand a guitarist a violin and expect them to be fine with that. Or vice versa, if you prefer.

I like, use and pay for Ardour, but I also like realism.

Re: Ardour 5 released

#39

Post by dawhead »

Joeboy wrote: post #38
fit2rule wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur - been using DAW's for decades now, and Ardour out of the box on a newly installed Ubuntu Studio-based system has tons, and tons of plugins - there isn't a single category of plugin in the OP's list that isn't available. You just have to not shop for them, and rather look in the repository, because they're there ..

This is a Free Software antipattern. Yes, there are things that exist that claim to do the same thing as commercial software. No, that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually functional replacements for that software. I mean some of them are, but there's no sampler that will painlessly play modern sample packs, no usable pitch correction, nothing a tenth as good at noise reduction / audio restoration as Izotope RX.…

That's all fair and correct.

But why is there no Izotope on Linux? People gripe at free software developers for "not providing Izotope", when in reality that software represents years of dedicated R&D, something that most people are not willing to pay for (even on platforms other than Linux). The simple reason why Izotope and Kontakt and Melodyne are not available on Linux is not that free software developers haven't written them, it is that the companies that do write them have chosen not to make them available.

I was very fortunate to start Ardour at a time when I did not need the income. Expecting to see world-class plugins like these show up without the involvement of the companies that did the R&D (and/or defined the proprietary file formats in use) is naive.

FWIW, I have talked to Melodyne in the past about adding support for their non-linear data access API, but they have been "unable to come to a consensus about how we could permit this in an open source project".

So for sure, these kinds of plugins are not available on Linux: because their developers have chosen that.

Re: Ardour 5 released

#40

Post by dawhead »

s_kilk wrote: post #35
roel_v wrote: post #4

Is there anyone on here who uses DAW's seriously, and has tried Ardour? Can it compete with the big boys?

Eh, it's pretty good, but as another commentor noted, Ardour has tended to lag behind other DAWs. For example: Ardour didn't get full Midi support until 2013, approximately twenty years after Pro Tools 1.0 launched with MIDI support from the start.

Do you seriously want me to list all the features that Ardour had for 10 years before they showed up in ProTools?

This is a recent list of PT user's most-wanted features.

http://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2016/6/21/which-of...

Every single one of the 7 completed items out of the 20 existed in Ardour for years before they were in ProTools.

We were the first DAW to provide anything-to-anything routing. We were the first DAW to have sub-sample accurate timecode lock. We were the first DAW to have sample-accurate automation. We were the first DAW to allow in-track mixing (transparent regions). We were the first DAW to offer PFL/AFL solo models in addition to solo-in-place. We were the first DAW to offer a dedicated monitor section in addition to the master outs. We were for a very long time the only DAW that could handle multichannel master outs (used, for example, in ambisonics set ups - 40 channel master bus, anyone?).

There are certainly areas where our functionality is behind the current state of one or more other DAWs. That's true for all DAWs. Our MIDI workflow is still weak, but evolving. But the idea that we generally "lag" behind other DAWs is mostly a conception of people who like and use what I term "modern pop production techniques", which has never really been my own personal focus. If there's another DAW out there that works better for you than Ardour, you should use it. But you might also be surprised at how well Ardour works for you, especially if you record people playing instruments.

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