[LAU] Ardour 2.5 released

[Paul Davis]

As happens all too often, its been longer than expected between
releases, but finally Ardour 2.5 is ready to ease the path, soothe the
brow and excite the heart of musicians and audio engineers worldwide.
Tons of bug fixes and several new features will make it worthwhile for
everyone and anyone to try this out.

    http://ardour.org/download

Note that you should probably remove ~/.ardour2/ardour.bindings in order
to ensure that you get the latest key bindings. As noted below, this
file will no longer be created unless you explicitly edit the key
bindings yourself via the GUI.

PACKAGERS and SOURCE BUILDERS please note that this release sees a new
library dependency. Ardour 2.5 requires the aubio library, which is
small and fast to build. Many distributions do not currently package it.
You know what to do ...

OS X users The first native release of 2.5 will not be ready until at
the earliest July 13th, possibly as much as several days after that. We
apologize for the delay, caused by problems with our build system.


New Features
=============

      * plugin selection via menu (per plugin "manufacturer")
      * plugin "favorites"
      * dynamic track resizing with the mouse
      * Rhythm Ferret now has note onset detection as an alternative to
        percussion onsets.
      * make track faders display automation-driven changes
      * add "Consolidate Range" which writes a new audio file and uses
        it to replace whatever was in the playlist within the range
      * add "make range to next marker" and "export range" context menu
        items for range markers
      * all GUI menu items/actions can now be activated using OSC
      * new "name-new-markers-at-creation" option
      * zoom-to-region (on one or both axes)
      * fit-tracks (selected tracks sized to vertically fill editor
        window)
      * insert-time operation to add "silence" to the timeline
      * 12 saved "view states" that save zoom levels and timeline
        positions
      * working latency compensation and I/O configuration for AU
        plugins 
      * goto-wall-clock command
      * 
      * 
Fixes and Improvements
======================

      * at least 20 crashing bugs fixed
      * use latest version of libsigc++ (potential bug fixes)
      * use version 1.2 of RubberBand for speed & quality improvements
        and potential patent avoidance
      * online (and available) manual updated, including correct key
        binding tables
      * editor GUI is now 100% 64-bit for audio timeline values
      * never save keybindings to user's ardour directory unless they
        change them
      * allow keybindings to use arrow keys (GTK doesn't permit this)
      * fix for plugins-do-not-work-on-all-channels bug
      * fix track selection sensitivity botch for Import action, should
        have been toggle-waveform-visible instead 
      * Support FFT for multi channel tracks and fix analysis for tape
        track regions.
      * fix mix group problems caused by recursive loop when modifying
        gain/gui
      * make big clock stay on top even in broken desktop environments
      * fixes to correct the results of running time/pitch shifting
        multiple times on the same region
      * updated swedish translation
      * don't double-call JackStartFreewheeling if we're already
        freewheeling
      * small changes to export code to hopefully fix some bugs with
        range export(s)
      * minor UI fixes for clocks and Locations dialog. Prevent tape
        tracks from skewing the session extents
      * major fix for computing plugin I/O configuration when using
        mono/stereo plugins in stereo/mono tracks/busses
      * fix up scaling problems with cleanup caused by redisplaying all
        regions every time a file is removed
      * fix for illegal audio device selection in audio setup dialog
      * fix for plugins being shown twice in the automation menus
      * make generation of new region names scale properly rather than
        being O(N^2) 
      * reset meter peaks when meter point is reset
      * editor faders now insensitive to unmodified scroll wheel events
        (Alt-scroll does the same thing)
      * change the step size for scroll-driven resizing
      * make region context menu items always operate on well-defined
        and reasonably obvious region selection
      * ctrl-w shortcut ("close dialog") works on plugin editors
      * make bounce range and bounce region work properly (wrong
        boundaries before)
      * prevent periodic auto-save from causing GUI deadlock during
        export-ranges
      * improve horizontal scrolling. When the playhead is moved past
        the end marker, the canvas will alter its boundaries as needed.
        The Zoom to Session button will now reset the canvas size to
        start-2-end plus a little extra after end, so the end marker is
        visible. 
      * Move the Enable Track Meters option to Metering menu section
      * removing sends now cleans up fully, preventing problems when
        adding sends again later
      * check both whole-file and part-file regions when adding to the
        visible region list, and do not show regions that are region
        list equivalent with existing entries
      * Fix up checks for whether the track height is too small for the
        name highlight. Fixes irritating issue with 31 pixel height
        tracks having small waveforms but no name highlight.
      * make "feature lines" always be the right height as tracks resize
      * nudge clock now has a default value of 5 seconds, not zero
      * What used to be the pink recording rectangle is now blended into
        the recording regions so that they appear to be the same thing.
        Then recording specific colors are added so the waveform and
        region base when recording are all various shades of red during
        recording. *** Open Theme Manager and click Restore Defaults for
        these changes to apply ***

Contributors
============

Paul Davis, Ben Loftis, Doug Mclain, Ryan Scott, Colin Fletcher, Sampo
Savolainen, Jesse Chappell, Sakari Bergen, Dominic Sacre