[ardour-dev] Live Mixdown

[Brett McCoy]

Urbansound wrote:

> My desire is to consider Ardour in a live, 32 channel, audio control system 
> in a small entertainment house, extending real inputs as low impedance XLR 
> type microphone inputs and high impedance instrument inputs.  The output 
> side would be 4 channels out to discrete monitor channels and 3 channels 
> main output to main amp, (main = Left/Right, plus sub-woofer).
> 
> (1) There are several XLR multi-channel vendors, but I wonder even if I find 
> Linux drivers for these input cards, would "Jack" still be able to carry 
> them to Ardour, (a question for Jack, I know),  if others may have 
> experience here?  And same of course for output modules to main and support 
> amplifiers. ?

Actually, Jack doesn't interact with the hardware, it's ALSA (or OSS, 
but I don't recommend it) that you need supported drivers for. Multiple 
Delta1010s or RME Hammerfall cards may be your best bet -- they are very 
well supported under Linux and are "pro" quality audio interfaces.

> (2) Is there anyone using Ardour in such a live setting or even studio, as 
> yet.?

Yep. I've got a small project studio I use for recording and scoring, 
using Ardour & Rosegarden and a Delta1010. I use a second machine 
(running Windows, with an M-Audio 2496 card) for various synth and 
sampler plugins that won't run on Linux, connected back to the Ardour 
machine via SPDIF.

> (3) If so, can a reference be made that we might communicate by email with 
> someone using the system at these levels presently? Ardour appears to be 
> approaching some nicely stable levels of operation, according to list 
> conversations.  As such, if we can iron out a reliable application, a 
> significant example of Ardour would emerge and I would tend to contribute 
> help in the docs and list responses long term, providing both live and post 
> operating feed on the web, that others could investigate, citing Ardour as 
> the heart of the system.

Just hang around long enough... and don't be afraid to experiment. I've 
been using Ardour for nearly a year now, and it is pretty solid now... I 
rarely get crashes or xruns. I recently installed Sonar Home Studio on 
the Windows machine, and it crashed the first time I ran it. Go figure. :-)

-- Brett
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Programmer by day, Guitarist by Night
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