Ardour Windows Port

There is now some extremely good news for MuseScore Windows users wishing to render scores in a DAW.

Until recently the only serious option was to use the JackRouter ASIO driver to connect with one of the mainstream commercial DAW applications, a process IME fraught with problems and inconsistencies, due to them not being JACK capable.

Here is an example - until recently I was able to get the JackRouter ASIO driver to appear in the devices window in Sonar Professional on my Windows 8 machine, which was fine, but suddenly I found it would no longer appear, and have had to resort to using the VB Asio bridge to route audio to JACK, not an ideal situation.

I learned recently, however, that the Ardour team finally had a stable Windows port of the software, and I have spent the last couple of days trialling one of their recent nightly builds.

I am able to report favourably. The Ardour Windows DAW is highly stable, connects with MuseScore with no problems, and apart from a few idiosyncrasies which I shall be reporting to the development team has just been an exercise in finding out how you use standard DAW techniques in Ardour, and I thoroughly recommend you to give it a try.........

http://ardour.org/windows.html

The only slight fly in the ointment is that Ardour expect you to subscribe in order to download the full version, which I regard as highly suprising given that they are trying to promote Ardour to Windows users. and that it is currently unsupported. The financial commitment is not great though, and you can cancel the subscription at any time.

It may be that the MuseScore community can help out with Ardour support here - we have a large Windows user base spread across several timezones, so if even a few of us develop some expertise with Ardour, a mutually beneficial symbiotic support relationship should develop.

Certainly the ease with which Ardour integrates seamlessly with MuseScore via JACk, including the ability to synchronise transport mechanisms, I find highly impressive.

Link to here crossposted to the Ardour Windows forum.