[ardour-users] Help - planning

[Josh Karnes]

OK, I've been using Ardour semi-regularly now for about a year.  Most of the 
time has been since 0.9beta23 which is what is currently on the system.

The system is an AMD Athlon 1300i system with M-Audio Delta 1010 card. 
Fedora Core 1 with Fluxbox WM has been a fast, stable choice.  Occasionally 
ardour has crashed the system.  I will boot into gnome every now and then 
for maintenance stuff since the file management and gui are clean and easy 
but I always use FB for audio work.

OK so my point.

In about six weeks or so I'll be moving the studio, moving into a "real" 
facility and this system will be the centerpiece for the tracking rig.  We 
have several other computers and will likely be combining two functional 
studios into one.  I figure this transition time is a good time to rethink 
the whole system and hopefully plan on moving to Ardour 1.0 presuming it may 
be right around the corner (right?).

So eventually I want to use this system with the Delta 1010 for most audio 
I/O and use a RAMSA DA7 console for mixing and automation programming, 
transport control, all that.  I figure I need to get a card with 24 channels 
worth of ADAT I/O to connect to the DA7 and then rebuild the system.

I have become familiar with Fedora Core 1, Core 2 running on two different 
computers and have been using RedHat since about 6.x, so I'm kind of used to 
the way they do things.  I guess my current plan is to rebuild the box 
(system partitions) around Fedora Core 3 with the new sound card(s) and 
fresh install of Ardour and all the required extras, ccrma patched kernel 
and whatever else I need, using binaries and RPMs wherever possible.  I have 
not had good luck building apps from source and I want to avoid it if 
possible.  Idea is to basically get a dump of everything I need from planet 
ccrma and install it all from a CD with RPMs.  I haven't warmed to using apt 
and this machine will not be on any network.

Idea is to use the converters in the Delta 1010 to track most of the time 
from my vintage console pres (16x PM1000 channels) and through a Drawmer, 
other outboard nice pres & etc., and use the additional channels in the DA7 
if I need more than 8 simultaneous inputs.  So I need to be able to track 
from either sound card.  Likely monitor through the DA7.  I'm assuming Jack 
& Ardour will handle this with ease.  I want to be able to record a track 
through my vintage/nice stuff, and then mix/monitor through the DA7 and also 
use the DA7 as a DAW controller.

So my questions:
1. can anyone recommend an affordable, usable, well-supported card with 24 
channels of ADAT I/O?  I'll take 32 channels.  Doesn't need any analog at 
all or likely any MIDI.  Needs to interoperate with Ardour/Jack & my Delta 1010.

2. does this sound like a good plan?  Will FC3 be too much of a resource hog 
(if running FluxBox)?  Is there a better distro to go with (not talking 
about the u-build-it thing like gentoo...  too much work to install & 
maintain).

3. is my whole DAW-control/automation/monitoring idea with the DA7 going to 
work?  What do I need to do special?

Thanks-