The developers of Ardour have announced the release of version 2.0 of the free digital audio workstation. Ardour turns any computer running Linux or OS X into a tool to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. Version 2.0 is available as an OS X (10.4) universal package and also as source code. Linux distributions will have prebuilt binaries available in the near future.

Highlights of version 2.0 compared to the last stable release (0.99) include:

• New user interface featuring:
• More accessible menus
• Improved overall GUI design
• Instant accelerator key rebinding direct from menus
• Destructive recording (“dubbing”) capabilities (as used by the new Harrison Xdubber)
• Undo/redo across program startup/shutdown
• Redesigned and more stable support for VST
• Support for 24 bit integer native files in addition to 32-bit float as in 0.99
• Modular support for hardware control surfaces, including the Frontier Designs Tranzport and Mackie Control Protocol devices

The new version is fully backward-compatible with older releases of Ardour, and can be installed in parallel with them. Older versions cannot load sessions saved by Ardour 2.0.

With the release of 2.0, the project’s development will accelerate as it returns to focusing on major features and workflow. The developers also look forward to the results of this summer’s Google Summer of Code projects involving MIDI editing and surround panning, and expect to release version 2.1 within a few months, containing new features that have been under development but were not merged into this release.

The software itself is available free of charge, but developers encourage users to support the software through subscriptions and donations.