[ardour-users] Low volume for imported WAV Files

[Them]

Louis Lam wrote:

>>One unrelated thing you could try (just for fun) is set up hydrogen to
>>be a jack slave and pipe it's output through jack to a track input on
>>ardour.  If you do it like that, than you can control the hydrogen
>>track's volume like any other track while still having the freedom to
>>change the drum part without having to export to WAV.  Hydrogen will
>>start playing when you hit play on ardour.  
> 
> 
> Hey, thats a great idea, perhaps i have not gotten to the point where I know how to do that (ie.
> making Hydrogen a jack slave and control from ardour). The advantage being I can change the drum
> part (if i want to ) on hydrogen itself without exporting to WAV. 

This shouldn't prove too difficult... you will need to set up a track or 
tracks for your drums (I prefer to use multiple tracks for drums, for 
more flexibility in mixing), then decide which channels in Hydrogen will 
  go to what audio stream in Jack (I suggest using qjackctl for this). 
Hydrogen has 32 channels you can use, although it might be best to 
sub-mix cymbals and toms into single tracks.  Once you do that, you need 
only select what the inputs are for each track in Ardour.  It will 
require some experimentation, and perhaps making snapshots of several 
different configurations.

You could even get more complicated and have Rosegarden control Hydrogen 
via MIDI -- maybe export your Hydrogen tracks as MIDI, import into 
Rosegarden, then you can synch against synthesizers or whatever else you 
might have using MIDI.  Then Rosegarden could be sending audio out 
through several different routes, which you record onto multiple tracks 
in Ardour.

> At the end of the day after i've laid all the non-drum tracks i'd want to export the whole thing
> into a wav (for mastering, convert to ogg or mp3 etc...). That would still require converting the
> drums to wav first is that right?

No, they'd be audio tracks in Ardour already. You'd mix down everything 
together or pipe again out through Jack into a mastering app like Jamin 
and then back into Ardour for the final pre-master mix, which you could 
then would author for a CD or convert to an MP3 or whatever.

>>But it doesn't really
>>matter how you decide to get a drum track into Ardour.  Either by WAV
>>or by jack slave, you can always use a ladspa amplifier in ardour to
>>raise the volume of a track that has less than optimal levels. 
>>There's a ton of ladspa effects around that can help you out with bad
>>levels.
> 
> 
> Thats another option, but i gotta figure out which ladspa would help me do this well. 
> 
> For importing WAV files, would it help if I normalize the target wav first before importing?
> 
> I think i need to understand the way ardour controls the volume of imported WAV files. Outside of
> the mixer, don't seem to have a "master vol" where I can control the overall volume of the entire
> application. 
> 
> At this point, to me it seems that the playback vol of ardour is generally lower than that of the
> CDplayer or XMMS. Gotta find some way to level it up. Any suggestions?

Is it possible you are in some kind of monitoring mode in your soundcard 
or application?  Is your imported track correctly routing its output to 
the master out?  And where is the master out going?

-- Brett