[ardour-users] to ardour or not to ardour, that's the question

Wed Apr 7 02:48:05 PDT 2004

Hello,

Although Ardour might be interesting there are still a couple of things I am
not sure about. I have to say I have been subscribed to this maillist for
some time now and am enjoying reading about it.

I am a professional musician. I use a RME Hammerfall in combination with
Native Instruments plugins, Reason, Ableton Live, CubaseSX, Tracktion and
more. I don't need lots of plugins and virtual synths, just a couple of good
sounding ones. Maybe I can even use some soundfont synths with good results.

It seems that true Jack I can record LDASPA synth directly as audio in
Ardour, right? That sounds great since I am using the same method with
Native Instruments' VSTi's and Ableton Live. I am not so much into MIDI, I
am more into playing and recording a nice part instead of watching a grid
for 8 hours a day.

The questions I have are simple:
- will I be able to use RME's internal DSP-mixer for routing inputs and
outputs?
- will I be able to use low latency values like 1.5 and 3 ms like I can
under WindowsXP?

I really am interested in switching to Linux because I don't like the way
Microsoft and Apple are doing business. But at the moment WindowsXP is
working super smoothly for me. Some Linux users tell me Linux's OS won't
crash. This is no argument for me since I have not yet seen WindowsXP crash
on my systems. So it's a difficult situation for me at the moment. I
probably wait for version 1.0 of Ardour and a CRRMA install routine before I
can switch without putting too much time into it.

Any more tips and advices are very welcome!

Oh, I have done a lot of writing about audio software on my www.raapie.nl
site, so maybe I can promote some Linux stuff as soon as I switched. My
company's site is this one: www.melodiefabriek.nl/en/

Greetings from Holland,

Marco Raaphorst

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "roger Depreeuw" <rogdepre at skynet.be>
To: <ardour-users-ardour.org at lists.ardour.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 2:40 PM
Subject: [ardour-users] to ardour or not to ardour, that's the question

> Hello all ardour users and potential ones.
>  I write this message because I'm a happy owner of a professional
> recording/mixing/mastering platform that still impresses me and others.
> On my system I have 3 pieces of software running simultaniously and
> seamlessly interconnected through the jack daemon.
> There is first of all ardour  which takes a central place in the
> recording/mixing/mastering process.
> Ardour at it's one is used to take care of the recording.
> Once recorded you have the individual tracks nicely displayed in the
> editor window, ready to start a musical adventure.
> Each track (instrument) individually is checked, edited and improved
> with some plugins, when needed.
> During the mixing process I use ardours'digital mixer in combination
> with my external analogue mixer .
> The final stage in the mix is done by recording it into a stereo track
> in ardour (This step is not necessary but usefull when stepping back to
> change/improve the sound and as I write this it comes to my mind that a
> snapshot would do the trick as well) .
> The output of this stereo mix is sent to the master jack  and  that is
> where I usually add some plugins  like reverb... The output of the
> master jack is sent to "JAMIN" (A nice and powerfull premastering tool).
> With this tool you can make the sound richer by playing with the boost,
> 3 band compressors and other limiters. The output of jamin is sent back
> to and recorded by another stereo track in ardour. It is this track or
> region I export to a WAV file. This file is then opened by the 3th tool
> "REZOUND" for final mastering like denoising,normalizing and eventually
> adding again  a LADSPA plugin. The final stage is to resample the files
> for CD burning.
>  I know that rezound can open the wav files straigth from ardour ( and
> therefore there would be no need to export the track/region first), but
> I'm not shure yet what the implications are when you change the files
> from within rezound.
> But then again, I still know collegues who have to transfer their mix to
> a DAT tape and physically have to go to another location/machine for the
> mastering process.
>
> And as I have convinced the potencial users by now I want to share my
> experience  on how to install ardour.
> I started from scratch, meaning that I reinstalled linux (RedHat 8.0).
> I always create a partition in ext2fs on the IDE harddisk (My experience
> is that ext3fs results in xruns due to the overhead and that is  the
> last thing you want).
>  Although the rest of the story is most related to a RedHat release it
> may be usefull for others as well.
>
> Now make shure in this stage that you check for the latest drivers, if
> you have specific HW.  In my case , the adaptec SCSI driver v2.0 is
> required. (The standard aic79xx in RedHat 8.0 is version 1).
> Next thing to work on is the low latency patch and preemptable kernel
patch
> A good place to look at is:
> http://www-ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
> Again it is RedHat related but it is an excellant library for most if
> not all of the source software that is discussed here.
> Here one remark I have is that the kernel binaries don'twork for all HW.
> I ended up with an unstable kernel, and again it took me some time to
> find out.
> So the safe thing to do is to start from source and compile  a kernel
> for your own machine.
> (I haven't done this yet, so I'm still running the standard kernel
> 2.4.18-14. I have no problems with xruns, but I must admit I use a
> system with dual CPU and a SCSI disk).
> A good guideline I use for the rest of the installation process is :
> http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/ALSA_JACK_ARDOUR.html
> Compile from source, cause certain options are important.
> Look at each install to the different options available
>
> > ./configure --help
>
>
> I use --prefix=/usr for most of the libraries, alsa and jack install
> (for ardour,jamin,rezound I use the default /usr/local).
> I use --enable-optimize whenever available.
>
> Installing ALSA as described in the guideline (except for certain options)
> Reboot the system to check if the configuration is setup correctly and
> that alsa is running.
> check that the modules for your soundcard are ale installed : >lsmod
> look at the file /etc/modules.conf
> try to restart alsa.
>
> Installing prerequisites as described look at the "www.ardour.org" for
> the versions required.
> Installing LADSPA as described but look at ccrma site for a more
> complete list of plugins.
> Installing JACK as described .
> try to run jack with a simple command: jackd -d alsa
> Install "xmms" and "xmms jack" from ccrma .
> run JACK properly : >jackd -R -d alsa  -d ice1712 -H -r 48000&  (in my
case)
> Put a favorit CD in your CD writer and start xmms select the "jack
> output plugin" in options preferences
>
> AND THEN STOP AND RELAX
>
> If you enjoyed it, most likely alsa and jackd are running smoothly.
> Check the terminal display you started jackd from for any "xruns".
>
> Now it's time to compile ardour,jamin,rezound...
>
>
> PS: Hope it helps. At least it will save me some time when I do another
> install.
>
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