Scales among updates to the free Ardour DAW — with tuning on the way

Ardour 9.8 continues the rapid, detailed development of this free and open-source DAW, with improved session recovery and clip recording, expanded support for controllers and hardware, and an arpeggiator MIDI tool. The 9.8 update also adds scales and keys, but with a twist: unlike competing software, scales/modes will soon be tuning-aware.

The developer of Tweakbench wants to remake the DAW without linear time

The Digital Audio Workstation can never quite escape the timeline and its roots in multitrack tape. Tweakbench’s new Noemi, which entered alpha last month, starts from scratch. What if music in the DAW could constantly evolve and change? What if the DAW were non-deterministic?

Peter Kirn - March 4, 2026

Ardour 9.2, free and open DAW, grants user wishes — Region FX, anyone?

If you haven’t tried Ardour in a while — or if you’re new to the idea that a DAW could be free and open source — you might be surprised. Major updates and a lot of listening to users means you don’t have to sacrifice features like clip recording and editing (including looping), piano roll windows, and more. Plus you get things a lot of tools can’t do, like region effects. Ardour is worth downloading on macOS, Windows, or Linux — any of them.

Peter Kirn - February 23, 2026

Ardour, the free and open DAW, is better than ever – and Ardour 9 is coming

Peter Kirn - April 8, 2025

People are speedrunning FL Studio: meet extreme DAW sports

Peter Kirn - September 4, 2023

Studio One 6: video track, collaboration, new effects, mixing controls; review roundup

Peter Kirn - October 4, 2022

Tracktion Waveform Free gets updates for 2022 – and it’s a solid no-cost starter DAW

Peter Kirn - August 22, 2022

Bitwig Studio 4.1: color palettes, note FX with physics and more, Sampler release chaining

Peter Kirn - November 4, 2021

Ableton Live 11.1 in public beta, with new tools and native Apple Silicon support

Peter Kirn - September 28, 2021