Ardour 8.4 Digital Audio Workstation: Still Relying On GTK2, Adds AAF Import

Ardour 8.4 was released this week as the newest update to this open-source digital audio workstation (DAW) for Linux / macOS / Windows platforms.

While the GIMP 3.0 release is approaching in May for the long-awaited GTK3 port of that image editor, the Ardour DAW is another still currently relying on the GTK2 tool-kit. With Ardour 8.4 they have now pulled in the source code for the GTK2 toolkit plus their patches into the Ardour source tree. Given that GTK2 is being deprecated by a number of Linux distributions, Ardour is now bundling their patched GTK2 sources as part of their build integration. Ardour developers may also end up stripping down some elements of the GTK code-base that go unused by Ardour as well as making other improvements. But long story short it doesn't look like Ardour will be leaving GTK2 at least in the near-term.

Ardour 8.4 meanwhile adds initial support for Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) import support, a new "Adwaita" color theme based on the GNOME Adwaita desktop theme, numerous bug fixes, and other updates. The initial AAF audio format support is considered beta quality for now and "(mostly) functional" according to the developers.

Downloads and more information on the Ardour 8.4 DAW release via Ardour.org.