[ardour-dev] Mono switch

[Mark Knecht]

On Apr 8, 2005 9:32 AM, gerard van dongen <gml at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Apr 2005 08:56:37 -0700, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> 
> >    As I've gone through looking at the change over from Pro Tools to
> > Ardour (am I really doing this?) there is one thing I think I'll miss
> > a lot - my 002 Rack's Mono switch. None of my other outboard monitor
> > signal path has this. I find it important to listen periodically in
> > mono as it helps me make sure I'm not doing something silly.
> >
> >    How do other Ardour users do this? It doesn't seem particularly
> > easy with Ardour and Alsa. I don't see it in Ardour, not in hdspmixer.
> >
> 
> Well you could just put both panners of the master out in the middle
> or you could route the output of the master-bus to a monobus and mute that
> unmute that - and mute the master -- if you want to listen in mono.
> It is two clicks though, and make sure the mono-bus goes directly to some
> alsa pcm output, not back to the master output.
> A kind of opposite group binding for mutes would be nice in this case.
> Similar to the panner linking. Muting one of the group would unmute the
> other.
> Relations like that. I guess you could use a midi controller to generate
> both the binding for mute solo bus and unmute master bus.
> But I just use the pan controls of my analog mixer myself.
> 
> As I type I realize:
> 
> A really handy way is to use the monitor bus. If you create a new session,
> create one with a monitor bus.
> Make this one mono or panned in the middle.
> Then clicking solo on the master bus will put the output through the
> monitor bus.
> Trying it now, and I can't figure out how to get that to work though.
> 
> hope this helps
> 
> Gerard
> 

Gerard,
   Thanks for the ideas. I'm sure there's some way to do this
relatively easily if I build it into the session. Since I'm using an
HDSP 9652 but not using all outputs I could even pan two outputs to
mono and switch between then somehow I'm sure.

   However all of that seems a bit of a kludge for something that's a
pretty standard function, at least in hardware.

   I should point out that Pro Tools (TTBOMK) doesn't include a 'mono'
function in software, most probably because they have the mono
hardware switch.

   I grabbed an older headphone amp that I had been intendign to get
out. Turns out it has mono switches all over the place, so at least
while using headphones I can do this very easily. That will suffuce
for now. However the D/A I was going to buy doesn't have a mono
switch, nor would I want it to, so this will be a bit of an issue down
the road.

   I look forward to hearing what other folks do.

Cheers,
Mark