Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Finally Adds Native MP3 Importing Support

While lossy compression audio formats like MP3 are not recommended for use within professional audio tasks, for those using the open-source Ardour digital audio workstation (DAW) software as of today there is finally native MP3 import support.

Obviously it's better working with lossless audio formats as source material for Ardour and other digital audio workstation software suites, but given how common MP3 content is, there certainly is relevance to being able to import MP3s into DAWs. But historically due to licensing/patent issues, MP3 support within Ardour hasn't been possible -- thus leading to common complaints/questions by users over the years.

Back in 2017, the patents expired and the MP3 licensing program was terminated opening up more software to finally supporting MP3 out-of-the-box. Now as we approach 2020, and in the same week as Firefox 71 adding native MP3 playback support, Ardour now allows MP3 files to be imported into the workstation.

MP3 support was added today to this open-source digital audio workstation across several commits. The MP3 implementation is based on the minimp3 minimalistic MP3 decoder.