Ardour

Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 8 years (2016–2023), in 12 threads.

People raised many different problems with Ardour, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 18 complaints

Download requires clicking through four pages to reach the installer2023-10-09
Slider snaps back to 1x on release, so playback speed can't be kept2023-10-09
Grid lines are too bright, creating a jarring barrier in the wrong place2022-10-17
Mixer buttons differ in color and size, confusing what they do2022-10-16
Abbreviated button labels like Iso and Grp are hard to interpret2022-10-16
Ctrl-click doesn't solo single tracks or adjust grouped volume sliders individually2021-12-05
Can't easily reorder tracks by dragging; solo on a group soloes all tracks in it2021-12-05
Feels like a chore to perform any action when making music2021-09-15
Feels like a chore to perform any action when making music2021-09-15
Track view is extremely slow and laggy when zoomed out with many tracks2021-09-04
Scrolling the view gets laggy when there are many tracks2020-12-16
MIDI workflow is terrible and hardware setup is split into its own window2020-11-26
Feels clunky and commenter never figured out how to use it2020-07-22
Feels clunky and might crash if the user moves wrong2020-07-22
Interface confusing when using MIDI tracks alongside audio2020-05-11
Distro-packaged versions are outdated and poorly installed, basically unusable2019-06-09
Ardour's user interface is considered messy and hard to use2016-11-05
Timeline-based interface is complicated and drains the user; no smooth composing workflow2016-09-28