[ardour-dev] Using Ardour as a front end for loading DSP effects.

[Reuben Martin]

On 12/2/06, James Courtier-Dutton <James at superbug.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering how hard it would be to use the Ardour front end to load
> effects directly into the DSP of some sound cards. E.g. Creative Audigy2
> and E-MU cards. Is the Ardour GUI well abstracted from signal processing
> part, or are they very much linked? It would be nice if one could
> display channels inside the DSP and add effects to them all in Ardour.
> So, with Ardour, one could then mix DSP effects with central CPU
> software effects.
>
> For example, I have recently implemented ALSA support for some E-MU
> cards, and it would be nice to use Ardour as a Linux version of PatchMix.
>
> The complicated bit is changing the rate.
> For 1x rate, normal 1 channel DSP code is used.
> For 2x rate, 2 next door channels are used, each running at 1x rate, so
> different DSP code is needed.
> The same again for 4x rate, i.e. 4 channels are used.
>
> So, what do people think? Would this sort of feature be a step forward
> or a step backwards for Ardour?
>
> James

It would probably be better if you created a LADSPA plugin to
interface with the DSP. Then Ardour could use it just as it would any
software DSP effect.