[Ardour-Dev] ambi panning in a3

Jörn Nettingsmeier nettings at stackingdwarves.net
Tue Nov 1 10:37:29 PDT 2011


On 11/01/2011 06:19 PM, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 05:28:03PM +0100, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
>
>> what makes you think a3 won't have optional ambi panning at some point
>> in the very near future?
>
> For one, the fact A2 would have AMB panning 'in the very near
> future' something like five years ago. I even twice proposed
> to do the DSP part if someone else would take care of the GTK
> side, but nothing happened.
>
>> do you see any fundamental issues that i'm overlooking?
>
> A decent AMB panner takes a bit more than the spiffy graphics
> that the VBAP panner provides. In my AMB mixer it takes three
> controls (rotary in this case), and a non trivial graphical
> dialog to configure it.

ah well, a sparrow in my hand is worth more than a pigeon on the roof, 
at least in german :)
the ambi workflow i've arrived at could be shoehorned on the vbap panner 
without too much effort i guess.

> And you don't just need panners, other parts need to be 'AMB
> aware' at least (sends, groups, the plugin interface, solo
> logic ...).

so far, ardour trusts its users not to do silly things and quietly steps 
out of the way. which ultimately enables me to just bypass the built-in 
panner, slip an AMB plugin in and be a happy man. i'd say let's continue 
with this assumption and give the users enough rope to shoot themselves 
in the foot. a send in the sessions i work with is usually mono but can 
trivially be used to move b-format about if the need arises.

an ambi-aware group to me is just one that's 16 channels wide and 
doesn't try funny stuff. check.
with the custom metering option, you can even get post-fader, pre-panner 
metering, which gets rid of the sixteen useless bouncing bars and 
delivers just the information you need.

in my book, ardour's strength is a certain format agnosticism. of course 
many spiffy features assume stereo, but ardour won't throw a spanner in 
your works if you try something else. so i don't think we need too much 
format-specific infrastructure after all.

> And the complete monitoring module would need to
> be replaced.

to me, advanced ambi SIP falls into the "pidgeon on the roof" category. 
even so, you will get 90% functionality with what's already there.

> Even requests for trivially simple things such as extending
> the positive gain range of the faders result in resistance
> and silly objections, so I'm not holding my breath.

i'll file this under "non-technical issues", ok?

-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487

Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
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