[ardour-users] Analog Input level Monitoring for delta1010LT ?

[Jason Jones]

Doug McLain wrote:

> Latency is of no concern to you.  When I first got into this I was 
> under the impression that latency was a factor in overdubbing, but it 
> isn't. If you were doing things like using the computer as a musical 
> instrument (synth) or perhaps a software effects box for your guitar, 
> then it would be.  That's why bumping up -p is totally ok for you to 
> do.  Ardour is designed to know when you will 'hear' the output and 
> knows where to 'put' the input, for synced overdubbing, regardless of 
> latency.  I am doing basically the same thing as you, and did find 
> that when using JAMin during overdubbing, the overdubbed track was 
> lagged and had to be nudged backward (forward in time) a bit to be in 
> sync.  I guess ardour is suppposed to take into account the latency 
> created by jamin and account for it, so it's just a bug for now.  Turn 
> it off while overdubbing if you use it at all.

Thanks for the info.  This is *exactly* what I needed to know.  With 
this info, I'll be ready to rock on Monday.  As far as JAMin goes, I've 
never used it.  For now, I don't think I want to learn about it - just 
because I'm going slightly crazy trying to figure out ardour and this 
Delta card I got 2 days ago.  Isn't it great how I leave so much time to 
learn how to do something before I actually do it? :)  Computer nerds 
are weird... ;-)

For now, I'll just work on getting the best recording from ardour that I 
possibly can.  When that isn't good enough, I'll start looking for other 
software.

>
> Hardware monitoring with the Delta 1010(LT) is done with the 
> envy24control mixer app.  I doubt you've gotten this far without 
> it(?), but in case you have its in the alsa-tools package.  It gives 
> you full control and level monitoring of these cards.  With this, you 
> can send any / all PCM signals (audio coming from ardour, for example) 
> and live inputs to the Mix Monitor which you route to HW Out 1/2 for 
> instance, for live hardware monitoring.

Luckily, I found the envy24control about 30 minutes before I installed 
my delta.  I would have gone insane without it.  But, because I'm so 
inexperienced with it, there are *loads* of stuff I don't know much 
about.  For instance...  I don't have a clue (or a very big clue) about 
the loads of faders in the "analog volume" portion of the program.  
There is DAC, (Digital to Audio Converter, maybe?) ADC (Analog -> 
Digitcal Converter?), and another one...  I figured out that the DAC is 
the one I needed to turn up so I could hear the headphones, but that's 
about it.  The others, I haven't had time to fiddle with.....  Anyway...

So, to do the hardware monitoring, I just set all of the analog inputs 
in the Router page to the Monitor Mix, and that will turn on the 
Hardware Monitoring? (I've got the headphones set to analog outs 1 and 
2).  That makes sense.

One other problem we had was....  monitoring / changing the levels of 
the mic inputs (ins 1 and 2), or any inputs for that matter.  I couldn't 
find any controls anywhere that intuitively told me "These are the 
faders you need to adjust in order to control the level of input".  I 
just assumed the card didn't have that capability.  I read the manual 
(which, unfortunately, was written for windows), so I knew about the 
jumpers on the card (mic / line level)..  Is that the only way to adjust 
the input levels?  I'm kinda sensing that it's not, and I'm just missing 
something somewhere.  I hope this is the case.

>
>>
>> As far as recording at 96K - I definitely can turn that down - and I 
>> will.  In my magically perfect world, I'd love to record at 96K, but 
>> 44.1K will do fine.  Then I don't have to dither it down for CD.
>
>
> Best idea i've heard.  Honestly, doing this will probably fix 
> everything.  I am recording live drums/guitar (generally 6-7 tracks 
> simultaneously) on a system identical to yours in every respect except 
> 2400+ cpu with -p1024 without ever an xrun, since I use -r48000.

Consider it done.  Thanks for the suggestion.

> Pssht, tell me about it, you'd think think this was some sort of 
> ardour user support/discussion list or something :)

Isn't group therapy fun?  I hope someone has a problem in the future 
that I can help out with, so I can give, as well as take, from this 
awesome group.

--Jason