[ardour-users] Re: Book

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 10:27:38 -0500, Jan Depner <eviltwin69 at cableone.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-11 at 15:40, D. R. Evans wrote:
> > The reason that I couldn't get this far before was twofold:
> >
> > 1. This is utterly unintuitive, so all my attempts prior to reading the
> > documentation were doomed to failure. That's fair enough, I guess.
> > Serves me right for not reading the documentation first. Sort of. Mind
> > you, people accustomed to Windows programs won't be happy that they
> > can't even do the first thing they're likely to want to do unless they
> > resort to the documentation first. (And this is something that's almost
> > at the end of the current documentation, rather than being close at the
> > beginning.)
> > 
>         Actually, other than having to rec enable a specific track, this is
> exactly the way you record with any VCR, DVR, and most tape recorders.
> You have to select a specific track because you may have 30 or 40 of
> them.  This is also how Pro-Tools, Cubase, and others work.
> 

Well, actually Pro Tools is *slightly* different than Ardour in this
respect. Ardour is more powerful, but also far more confusing in some
ways:

1) Pro Tools and Ardour have two roughly identical mixer elements:

Pro Tools: Track & Aux-Track
Ardour: Track & Bus

What Ardour calls a Bus is an Aux-Track in Pro Tools. Both of Ardours
mixer elements are a bit more powerful in the way they all pre/post
sends, etc., but they are pretty much equivalent.

2) 

Pro Tools: There are a fixed number of internal routing channels
(called 'Buses') that allow you to route data from one place to
another. Anything can hook to any of the buses, but the number of
buses are fixed. To route audio from one place to another you take the
output from a track and hook it to a bus, and then you hook that bus
to the input of the destination and audio arrives. It's a fixed
architecture and requires two steps to properly route.

Ardour: There are no defined routing channels. Ardour uses something
closer to a 'patch cord' to get audio from one place to another. All
you do is put the name of the mixer element you want to hook to and
audio goes there. It's a one step operation to route.

I find Ardour more powerful and interesting, but it can be a bit
daunting to look at a huge list of destinations. Makea test session
with 24 stereo tracks in a machine with an HDSP 9652 and you find
yourself looking at 50-60 names. Confusing at times. In Pro tools I
see a list of 16 buses no matter how complex the session. It is
possible to run out of routing in Pro Tools. It is not possible
(theoretically) to run out of routing in Ardour.

Ardour is groovy...

- Mark