[ardour-users] Control surfaces

[George Chan]

Hi,

I just joined this list about 2 weeks ago, and I am wondering what mixers and/or control surfaces people are using successfully with Ardour.

I was originally looking at either the Tascam DM-24 or the Yamaha 01V96 mixers with an RME sound card. But since most of my mixing will be done on the computer, it would make more sense to just buy a control surface.  I looked at the Tascam FW-1884 http://www.tascam.com/product_info.php?pid=269      and I was wondering if it would work with Ardour.  It seems to have a good "bang for the buck".

Price is a major consideration, but I need to produce commercial quality CD's with whatever I get.

When I build my audio only computer, it will be either a dual or quad AMD CPU with about 1 gig of RAM.

I've been a Slackware Linux user for 5 years.  I have Ardour-0.9beta11.2 running on my office computer, but won't really get to "play around" with it until I get some audio hardware on my next computer.

My audio experience is mostly with using analog gear, but, obviously, in making my own project studio, I've decided to go digital.  I'll be recording mostly acoustic instuments with little or no sequencers.  I was originally looking at Nuendo on a Windows platform, except that it is just too expensive and I hate using Windows (and I've never been a Mac fan).

I cannot afford to make a serious mistake on my hardware purchases, so, I have to get it right the first time.  I'll be starting this project from scratch, so I don't have any VST plugins to worry about.

Has anyone used Ladspa plugins for serious audio projects and been happy with the results?
What control surfaces and/or mixers are you using?
Has anyone used Ardour for commercial projects yet?
In your opinion, how does Ardour compare to DAW's on the PC?

I have read the February 2004 edition of Sound On Sound magazine that has an article on Linux software and have been to the Mirror Image Studio website at http://www.multitrack.us 

Thanks in advance for your help!



George