[ardour-dev] Where to go digital

[Iain Kennedy]

Hi,

We use ardour for a mobile internet radio station and are gradually 
growing our studio. We have been getting by with a small mixing desk and 
an RME multiface, but as we are doing stuff with multiple microphones and 
live bands, we need a more capable mixer with sub-mixes etc to improve our 
monitoring situation.

We have two basic choices of where to spend our budget

a) A nice analogue mixer with subgroups
b) Using ardour (and a MIDI worksurface) to do all the mixing/submixing 
etc.

Due to the often raucous nature of our studio, we currently use channel 
inserts with limiters on the microphones. If we were to buy some 
microphone preamps (such as RME's Octamic D), we'd like to use the digital 
connection to get the audio into Ardour via the Multiface, and still keep 
as many analogue connections spare as possible for live instruments etc.

Would using a LADSPA digital limiter give us similar control over the 
signal, or are we likely to run into the situation where we have a clipped 
signal entering into the system? My knowledge of audio falls somewhat 
short of the mark when it comes to the analogue to digital domain.

We've done a reasonable amount of investigation up to this point, but it's 
fairly crucial that we make the right decision, so any help you have to 
offer would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Iain