Ardour 2.6, the latest version of the free audio workstation for OS X and Linux, has been released.

This version is notable mostly for many dramatic improvements to GUI performance on OS X (native) and a few very important crashing fixes. But it also contains several interesting and useful new features.

New Features

• make libsndfile work with newer versions of FLAC (enables building a version that can open FLAC files)
• tracks in active edit groups now perform playlist operations (create, copy, select) in unison for playlists created for the group
• embedded LV2 GTK GUI support
• allow translated version use on OSX
• add session file type icon for OSX
• shift-click now works to extend marker selections (click one, then shift-click another to select all markers between them)
• marker drag moves all selected markers
• add initial-program-change support (Ardour can send a MIDI Program Change command on startup to set up external equipment; it can do this at any later time too)
• add move-selected-tracks-{up,down} commands
• add global option to enable/disable region fades
• enable activate/deactivate fades in all selected regions
• global option to hide/show region fades

Fixes and Improvements

• massive improvements for OS X GUI speed and responsiveness
• eliminate the double-draw during zoom on linux
• fix track+strip ordering issues when sync editor+mixer order is enabled
• fix for bad synchronization with other JACK transport-aware clients
• fix reload & use of MIDI port configuration, so that per-session setup is actually used
• fix URLs for freesound access
• new swedish translation
• fix handling of MIDI pitchbend message
• handle missing pixmap files more gracefully
• Fix import dialog clocks to display times that are correct in the current session
• fix up generation of BWF field contents to avoid truncation and use correct date
• stop AU plugins that fail to load (e.g. missing dongles) from crashing ardour
• handle JACK stopping without crashing
• fix audio glitches caused by plugin automation events
• fix crash when clicking on certain region list items
• security fix for libsndfile FLAC handling
• fix position of canvas “time cursor” during dragging
• make fonts smaller on location dialog buttons
• improve performance when dragging multiple regions on the same track
• reduce some redrawing of clocks
• Speed up track resizing
• fix disappearing automation controls when automation track has been made minimum size.
• change design for how certain region list items operate if there are multiple regions selected
• allow glue-to-bars-and-beats to be toggled for all selected regions
• Set add route dialog non-resizeable so that Window Managers size it more sensibly (looked ridiculous in ion3).
• repeated time stretches/pitch shifts on the same region now use the correct original data
• new grid line cache to speed up scrolling and grid display in general
• fit-tracks now ignores (and hides) “in-the-middle” unselected tracks
• fix possible crash and/or mis-setting of end-marker during session load

Developer Improvements

• compile with gcc 4.3
• support building on Leopard