[ardour-dev] Two jack servers? (One internal to Ardour)

[Florian Schmidt]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:16:47 +0000
vanDongen/Gilcher <gml at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> > > >    I started wondering if it wouldn't be possible to have two separate
> > > > Jack servers? The first jack server would sync to the sound card and
> > > > Ardour would hook up stuff that actually goes outside of Ardour. I
> > > > think this is what most people would want to look at most of the time.
> > >
> 
> > Well, wouldn't the internal jackd server would of course be driven by the
> > host app, in this case ardour?
> >
> > if so, why not just implement a jack backend driver that is woken by the
> > host, whenever work is to be done.
> >
> I think this would only get more confusing.
> How could you possibly know in advance what port a user may want to connect to 
> an outside app? 

Hi,

i agree on this point. I was just pointing out a solution for the sync
problem

> f.i. I have send  to a reverb-bus, but then I decide that an external app is 
> better. I would have to add an extra "external-send". How could that be 
> implemented? The driver of the ardour-jackd would have to have dynamic 
> port-counts. 
> The power of ardour is exactly that you can hook up anything to anything.
> I think it is an interface issue that is not solved by limiting or adding 
> functionality
> A better interface for the patchbay or an intergrated patchbay is a better 
> solution.
> F.i. a matrix style patcher , something that has been on my todo-list for a 
> long time.  I have a prototype for that that I never finished from two years 
> ago. I couldn't decide on a toolkit and it was impossible to get vertical 
> text on buttons without drawing each letter as a pixmap.

Hmm,

one thing i would like to see would be the ability to have a convention
about 'pathnames' in port names. The patchbay could then group them and
optionally hide certain groups.

I see ardour uses this scheme already. It could still be slightly
improved by adding another level. Right now i see stuff like

ardour:Audio 4/in 1
ardour:Audio 4/in 2
ardour:Audio 4/out 1
ardour:Audio 4/out 2
....
ardour:Audio 1/in 1
ardour:Audio 1/in 2
ardour:Audio 1/out 1
ardour:Audio 1/out 2
ardour:master/in 1
ardour:master/in 2
ardour:master/out 1
ardour:master/out 2
ardour:send 1/out 1
ardour:send 1/out 2

in the jack_lsp output. Now here the patchbay app could show the
following groups (this is kinda modelled after a typical filebrowser
thing where you can expand subdirs by pressing the [+] and collapse them
with the [-] again):

ardour:Audio 1/[+]
ardour:Audio 2/[-]
               in 1
               in 2
               out 1
               out 2
ardour:Audio 3/[+]
ardour:Audio 4/[+]
ardour:master/[+]
ardour:send 1/[+]

if you get my drift. Personally i would like to see the send 1
associated with the track it is sent from:

ardour:Audio 1/[-]
               in 1
               in 2
               out 1
               out 2
               send 1/[-]
                      out 1
                      out 2
ardour:Audio 2/[+]
ardour:Audio 3/[+]
ardour:Audio 4/[+]
ardour:master/[+]

and maybe also stereo pairs [or multichannel should be grouped, too]:

ardour:Audio 1/[-]
               in/[-]
                  1
                  2
               out/[+]
               send 1/[-]
                      out 1
                      out 2
ardour:Audio 2/[+]
ardour:Audio 3/[+]
ardour:Audio 4/[+]
ardour:master/[+]

This way an intelligent patchbay would be able to much easier connect
stereo pairs to each other (just select the grouped in and out and
connect them)...

Actually i would probably even add another level:

ardour:Tracks/[-]
              Audio 1/[-]
                      in/[-]
                         1
                         2
                      out/[+]
                      send 1/[-]
                             1 (sends are always outputs)
                             2
              Audio 2/[+]
              Audio 3/[+]
              Audio 4/[+]
ardour:Busses/[-]
              master/[+]
ardour:auditioner/[+]
ardour:click/[+]

All an app would have to do would be to use sensible portnames which
organize the ports into groups which the patchbay can then use to
visually group them and make connection of groups of ports easier.

The last above scheme would translate to ardour portnames:

Tracks/Audio 1/in/1
Tracks/Audio 1/in/2
Tracks/Audio 1/out/1
Tracks/Audio 1/out/2
Tracks/Audio 1/send 1/1
Tracks/Audio 1/send 1/2
Tracks/Audio 2/in/1
.
.
.
Tracks/Audio 4/out/2
Busses/master/out/1
Busses/master/out/2
auditioner/out/1
auditioner/out/2
click/out/1
click/out/2

What do you guys think about this?

Flo



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