<p> Another two months of development has rolled by, involving more than 600 commits by developers, and it's time for us to release Ardour 5.6. Although there are no major new features in this release, there is the usual list of dozens of bug fixes major and minor, plus some workflow and GUI enhancements. There has been a significant rearrangement of the transport bar to try to use space more efficiently and effectively. The new design also permits session navigation while using the Mixer tab, and there are numerous optionally visible elements. Similarly, the Preferences dialog was rearranged to try to make it easier to find and browse the many, many available options. Other interesting new features: session archiving, a new General MIDI default synth for MIDI tracks, and direct and immediate control of routing for heavily multichannel (typically multitimbral) synth plugins. </p>

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<h2>General Changes and Improvements</h2> <ul> <li>Speed up unloading large Sessions</li> <li>Speed up recent Session display, with many large Sessions and or snapshots.</li> <li>Transport control area layout changes.</li> <li>Add a mini-timeline to the Toolbar.</li> <li>Follow Edits has been renamed Follow Range and has changed behaviour.</li> <li>Allow customization of Toolbar via Preferences -> Appearance -> Toolbar</li> <li>Add ability to archive Session.</li> <li>Normalize audio when archiving to a fixed point format.</li> <li>Add more precise localization options to Preferences -> General -> Translation.</li> <li>Enable all types of Range locations (loop, start, end) to be glued to BBT.</li> <li>Allow preference for tempo to be expressed in divisions per minute or quarter notes per minute (General -> Tempo). </li> <li>Preference layout, grouping, wording/naming and tooltip changes.</li> <li>Add button to reset keyboard modifiers to recommended defaults in preferences (Editor -> Modifiers).</li> <li>Minor updates to Blueberry Milk, Caineville, Clear Gray and Cubasish Themes.</li> <li>Support added to compile on macOS 10.12 (Sierra).</li> <li>Modify playlist option labels in Duplicate Track/Bus dialog. [#7149]</li> <li>Support import of Tempo maps during MIDI import at selected position.</li> <li>Show context menu on right click on VCA track header.</li> <li>Support all drive letters on windows (with harvid version >= 0.8.2).</li> <li>Rename Bindings Window to Keyboard Shortcuts.</li> <li>Display name of conflicting keyboard shortcut.</li> <li>Allow automation line fill opacity themable.</li> <li>Add global monitoring controls to toolbar, enable visibility via Preferences -> Appearance -> Toolbar.</li> <li>Implement count-in before recording with fixed BPM, enable via Session -> Properties -> Misc.</li> <li>Implement record with pre-roll, accessible via Transport menu.</li> <li>Allow Editor toolbar and background to be themable.</li> <li>Allow changing Metronome level via Mouse Wheel on Metronome button in Toolbar.</li> <li>Display application version Session was last modified/saved with tooltip in recent session list. </li> <li>Scale Gain automation by masters current value if slaved.</li> <li>Add scripts to run Ardour under rr debugging tool.</li> <li>Disable VST scan in safe mode.</li> <li>Mark Session dirty when moving range/tempo markers. [#7217]</li> <li>Add undo/redo for changing marker lock style.</li> <li>Mark Loop button insensitive when no loop range is defined. [#7195]</li> <li>Name VCA's by number and user defined name if set. </li> <li>Add two export format specifications for stems.</li> <li>Include gmsynth.lv2 in application bundles/installers.</li> <li>Add option to use snapshot name instead of Session name when exporting.</li> <li>Save-As now working again as intended (no longer incorrectly asks about saving and does not incorrectly switch to new version unless asked)</li> </ul> <h2>Actions/Binding Changes</h2> <div class="alert alert-warning"> <p> This release changes the name of several Ardour actions that may be used by OSC & MIDI bindings and by customized key bindings. The affected action names are listed below. The old full action names began with "Editor/" - this has been changed to they all begin with "Common/". </p> <p> <strong>You can ignore this change unless you use OSC, or MIDI binding maps or customized key bindings.</strong> </p> <p> If you do use any of these features, you will need to either/or modify your OSC or MIDI bindings and redefine your key bindings after removing or renaming the customized ones. Failure to do this will mean that existing bindings to these actions will not function as intended. </p> <p> These changes were made in order to make these actions available from within the Mixer tab, rather than just the Editor. </p> </div> <h3>Affected Actions</h3> <ul> <li>alternate-jump-forward-to-mark</li> <li>alternate-jump-backward-to-mark</li> <li>set-session-start-from-playhead</li> <li>set-session-end-from-playhead</li> <li>toggle-location-at-playhead</li> <li>add-location-from-playhead</li> <li>alternate-add-location-from-playhead</li> <li>remove-location-from-playhead</li> <li>alternate-remove-location-from-playhead</li> <li>nudge-next-forward</li> <li>nudge-next-backward</li> <li>nudge-playhead-forward</li> <li>nudge-playhead-backward</li> <li>playhead-forward-to-grid</li> <li>playhead-backward-to-grid</li> <li>start-range-from-playhead</li> <li>finish-range-from-playhead</li> <li>start-range</li> <li>finish-range</li> <li>start-punch-range</li> <li>finish-punch-range</li> <li>start-loop-range</li> <li>finish-loop-range</li> <li>alt-start-range</li> <li>alt-finish-range</li> </ul> </div>