A few months ago Paul Davis (One of the primary programmers behind Ardour) had mentioned he was being employed full time again by a company with the express purpose of keeping him working on Ardour. He also mentioned that the company was rather large in the audio industry, but that he wasn't allowed to announce who it was yet.

He posted this to the list today...

Quote:

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Several months ago, I was happy to announce my employment by a then-
unknown company that enabled me to get back to full time work on Ardour.
On Friday last week, that employer announced their involvement with me
and the Ardour project overall. From ardour.org's announcement:

The Ardour project is happy to be able to announce the involvement and
support of Solid State Logic (SSL), one of the most respected and
trusted names in the field of audio technology. SSL has chosen to
support Ardour's development and to promote the idea of its broader
adoption within the audio technology industry. SSL's Managing Director,
Antony David, had this to say at SSL's AES press announcement:

[ ... ] Solid State Logic is committed to providing users with a
range of products that enhance the experience of producing music
or sound for picture. We are becoming a much more open company
and are establishing strategic partnerships throughout the
industry to deliver a new breed of hardware and software
solutions to audio workstation users. Our collaboration with
Waves and Algorithmix are examples.

Continuing down this track, SSL is proud to announce its
involvement with the Ardour workstation. We have been funding
development of the Ardour platform for a number of months and
plan to continue through our relationship with its key developer
Paul Davis.

[ ... ]

Our involvement with Ardour should not be seen as exclusive of
other workstation manufacturers and we regard the Ardour
platform as important for an industry that doesn't currently
have a truly open project interchange standard or an open
platform for plug-in developers. The open architecture and
platform neutral technology of the Ardour workstation are a
natural fit with SSL's long-term vision to provide scalable and
customisable solutions to a rapidly growing customer base.


The Ardour project continues to work with Harrison on its own product
plans for Ardour, and we look forward to welcoming the participation and
support of other companies and organizations.

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So that puts Harrison/GLW and SSL both behind Ardour. Me likey very much;)

Seablade

This is rather "disturbing" news.

Don't mean this negative at all. But that such a name does this must make others think. And for me it comes from a very surprising angle. If it had been RME or so I would have understood this completely (and it would have made more sense I think).

But it is good news.

--------------------
Expert in non-working solutions

Well Harrison has supported Ardour for some time now is my understanding, and in fact they were the ones that sponsored the destructive editing functions in it, as those are apparently more for its(Harrison/GLW) target market than Ardour was going to support readily.

I trust Paul enough to take this for good news, I completely understand your thoughts on it, then again lets say a company sponsored certain features in Ardour, in the same way as Harrison, well then that is that many more additional features for Ardour. From a buisness standpoint you have the advantage of being able to pay for the features you need/want for your buisness, and don't have to finance the entire software development(Of course SSL is for whatever reason, the one they gave is obviously in the announcement)

At any rate, it primarily comes down to trusting the Ardour folks to know what they are doing when they get into this, I have seen nothing that makes me worry thus far at any rate. There was a discussion thread on this some time ago(I think when Paul first mentioned being sponsored to work on Ardour full time) and a few options were presented in case it was decided a company wanted to take it further, but I don't think much came of it. Memory though can be a large factor there;)

Seablade

I had assumed it WAS Harrison, but SSL makes at least as much sense if you think about it the right way.

SSL is basically in the big desk game, right? Big desk sort of studios tend to go for hard disk recorders and lots of outboard rather then DAWs (At least for tracking), think IZ Radar and the like.

Now if SSL are looking to introduce a digital 'Big Desk', in the same sort of model as the new Midas & Cadac have done for live sound, they would be looking to a fairly tightly integrated recorder (it only makes sense)...

Somehow I don't see digi being prepared to license and customise on that basis, but given the recorder is not where the value is here, (It is in that $250K surface, preamps and DSP), being able to tightly integrate a capable harddisk recorder into that sort of board might make Ardour a very interesting proposition to such a company.

While a lot of the existing plugins leave a little to be desired, Ardours recording engine is as reliable at high track counts as anything I have ever used (and quite a bit better then some).

This is actually not that uncommon a model in some specialised markets, look at something like Rivendell, a free broadcast automation system funded by Salem radio, they are not interested in being in the software business, but are VERY interested in having an automation system that exactly fits their requirements. Sure they started that project, but picking one up and running with it also makes sense.

Just my £0.02

Regards, Dan.

Yea I was originally thinking Harrison as well, that is why I found this a bit surprising.

Quote:

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Now if SSL are looking to introduce a digital 'Big Desk', in the same sort of model as the new Midas & Cadac have done for live sound, they would be looking to a fairly tightly integrated recorder (it only makes sense)...

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My understanding is this is EXACTLY what Harrison does actually, in fact they are demoing boards now with Ardour running on it...

Quote:

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While a lot of the existing plugins leave a little to be desired, Ardours recording engine is as reliable at high track counts as anything I have ever used (and quite a bit better then some).

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Ok lets be honest, there are a LOT of VST plugs and the like I would like to use, and thankfully until you get to security systems like iLok and the like, I generally can. I am preparing to put Kontakt on my linux box to run with Ardour for example. Some LADSPAs leave more than a little to be desired, some are quite good. But they provide a nice entry into the market no matter the case, and hopefully will be expanding a bit(Multichannel or Surround Reverbs anyone?;)

But VSTs are a possiblity at least.

Seablade

Actually Paul just posted a really good example of what and why Harrison is backing ardour....

http://www.motherdubber.com/

From the FAQ

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Q: How was Harrison, a console manufacturer with no recorder or workstation experience, able to create this product?
A: Rather than develop our own proprietary product, or team up with a
developer who is not highly focused on the post-production market, we decided to partner with the Ardour open-source workstation project. This allowed us to have a thoroughly tested, feature filled workstation, while guaranteeing that our customers will be free of the frustrations inherent with workstations that are designed for the "2nd bedroom studio". Like other open source vendors IBM, SGI, and Apple, Harrison understands the kind of scalability and reliability that is needed in an "enterprise class" facility.

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This is exactly how I hope open source will develop myself, where it is much more of a service based industry than a product based. The open source product is there being worked on, but companies then sponsor it in order to get what they need out of it, at a much lower cost to themselves, and benefit to the open source project for getting a financial backer.

Seablade

Edited by seablade (10/10/06 02:18 AM)