Our friends at Ardour have released Version 7.1, and we would like to offer them huge congratulations! While the source code and their own builds were available on release day, many of you have been waiting for Ardour 7 to come to Ubuntu’s repositories.

That day has come. Ardour 7.1 will be landing in Ubuntu Lunar Lobster (future 23.04) and will be on Ubuntu Studio’s daily spins of Lunar Lobster very soon.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to backport Ardour 7.1 into Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 22.10, nor would we want to. This is because if we do, we might disrupt the workflow of people who are currently working with projects in 6.9 that are relying on its functionality and sound. Ardour 7.1 projects are not backwards compatible with Ardour 6.9 projects; once a 6.9 project is opened in 7.1, it is converted to a 7.1 project and cannot be used in 6.9 again unless restored from a backup.

This is also the reason we will not be releasing Ardour 7.1 into Ubuntu Studio’s main Backports PPA. However, we are giving Ardour its own Backports PPA so that users may upgrade Ardour in their Ubuntu (Studio) 22.04 LTS or 22.10 installation whenever they are ready.

To upgrade Ardour to 7.1, open a terminal and type the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntustudio-ppa/ardour-backports
sudo apt upgrade

If at any point you change your mind and want to revert to Ardour 6.9 (and hopefully haven’t converted any projects):

sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntustudio-ppa/ardour-backports

Enjoy Ardour 7.1! If you find it useful, please consider downloading and paying for the official package from Ardour themselves. They more than deserve it!