A bit sooner than expected, we have a fix for one very notable and ugly bug that was still affecting 2.6 (plugin automation tracks would be drawn in the wrong place on the screen). As a result, Ardour 2.6.1 is now available. For those waiting on OS X releases, we have a 2.6 native release already, and PPC will follow early next week; both will be updated to 2.6.1. Its not clear if or when there will be an X11-based release. Thanks to Sampo Savolainen for his work diagnosing and fixing this bug.

* "native" OS X support
o no need for X11 anymore.
o built using the GTK-OSX port of GTK to Quartz/Cocoa
o to compile this on OSX, please read the guide
* new import dialog
o better auditioning
o better presentation of options
o resampling quality control
* new JACK control dialog
o if you don't want to use qjackctl and don't require and external JACK patcher (i.e. "Let me just run Ardour, dammit!") this dialog will allow you to configure JACK. It only appears (as a tab in the new session dialog) if JACK is not running when Ardour is started.
* mouse scrubbing
o switch to mouse audition mode
o button1-press and drag
* separate MMC device ID's for send & receive
* range context menus modified for greater clarity and simplicity
* crossfades involving transparent regions now work appropriately
* click or drag in rulers works better
* update click data when sample rate changes
* provide limits to in-memory undo history depth
* provide limits to saved undo history depth
* optionally tie editor & mixer display order together
* provide GUI control for timecode-slave-is-synced
* make Ctrl-w close any dialog
* generate peakfiles for embedded files asynchronously
* metering now works more appropriately with no inputs
* big clock is always on top
* reduce memory usage during I/O from multichannel audio files
* change window visibility during startup
* use new translation domains, to avoid ardour 0.99 and ardour 2.X from colliding when installed in parallel
* new option (only-copy-imports) to avoid creating sessions that reference external audio files (i.e. all audio is either native, copied or hard-linked into the session)
* retain MIDI control information for plugin parameters
* auto-reconnect ALSA sequencer MIDI ports at startup