[ardour-users] some questions

[Josh Karnes]

Dave Phillips wrote:

> I know that VST support is very important to the Ardour developers, but 
> their success/failure in that area is heavily dependent on development 
> tracks for the kernel and for the WINE project. Perhaps some better 
> lines of communication are opening up, but at this point I don't think 
> the WINE team is following Ardour's needs very closely (I'd like to be 
> wrong about that).
> 

Well, WINE compiles and runs fine on my machine, it's 100% Ardour
difficulties that keeps me from using Ardour+vst at this point (or at least
keeps me from trying)...  seems no matter what I do, I get library
dependency problems when I try and build Ardour from source, even when the
libs are there, or should be there.  I guess the point is it'd be nice if
you didn't have to be an expert in building apps from source code on Linux
just to USE this feature in Ardour.  Last time I checked (month or two ago?)
it looked like the date of the 1.0 release was upcoming and I guess I
figured maybe they'd sort this out by 1.0 and I could wait to upgrade to 1.0
and mix at that point.  I need to get this project mixed and off to the
mastering engineer by, oh, end of January?  In that case, time is drawing
short for me to be able to do it all in Ardour.

>>
>>>    I'm using a Delta 66 card. If you're using such a card, what are 
>>> your JACK settings ?
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm using Delta 1010...  similar enough...  24/44.1, realtime, and 
>> whatever combo of buffers & etc. that results in 93ms of latency works 
>> for me.  I don't mind more latency but Jack won't start with higher 
>> settings.  No point in lower latency with the monitor mixer feature of 
>> the Delta cards. 
> 
> 
> I'd like to know more about monitoring with a Delta system. What's the 
> recommended setup ? I assume I want to go with hardware monitoring, but 
> I'm not completely sure I understand the connections.

It's easy.

Plug your cue-mix rig into outputs 1&2 on the delta.  This is where I'd put
a headphone amp.  And let's say you're recording on channel 1, so plug your
source into the channel 1 input on the delta.

Run the Envy24 control utility, unmute channels 1&2 output, turn the faders
up (Left only on 1, Right only on 2).  Unmute the input on channel 1 and
turn the fader up.  You should be able to see the meter moving when you make
noises into the mic.  Switch to the "Monitor Mixer" or whatever it's called
tab (used to be Monitor Mixer in Windows, I don't remember what it's called
in Linux because I'm not at that computer now).  For 1&2 click the radio
buttons "Digital Mix L" and "Digital Mix R".  Now when you make noises into
the mic connected to channel 1, you should hear it in the headphone.  What
this does is copy the signal input on whatever inputs you have unmuted and
turned up, and play that signal back on 1&2.

Now run Ardour.  Don't turn on "hardware monitoring".  Leave it as-is default.

If you have control room monitors running on different system than your cue
mix, then you can go to the qjackctl applet and on "Connections", drag a
line from the Ardour "Master 1" and "Master 2" outputs to another pair of
outputs on the Delta and you'll be sending the master to both 1 & 2 and also
the new pair of outputs.  Plug those outputs (say 5 & 6) into your control
monitors.  They will get Ardour playback master channel, but not the input
of whatever instrument you have plugged in.

Does this all make sense?  It's really easy, and in fact, this works so well
I'm amazed that anyone uses anything for recording other than Envy24
devices.  You totally don't need a hardware mixer unless you are recording
more simultaneous sources than you have physical inputs on the card.