[ardour-users] Help - planning

[Josh Karnes]

Jesse Chappell wrote:
> Josh Karnes wrote on Mon, 21-Mar-2005:
> 
>  > 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.
>  
> You should strongly consider upgrading to beta28 even before you
> do the big move, if possible.  Many nasty crashing bugs
> have been squashed.  But anyway....

well I would but...

not going to be doing any significant amount of recording between then and 
now.  However, if it looks like I'm going to have the studio built and the 
lights on before the 1.0 pops out, I may have to do the upgrade.


> The key word here is *or*.  You will realistically only be able to run ardour
> with one of those audio interfaces at any given time.  


nononononono  this doesn't sound good at all.

what I strongly desire to do is to have the input of a track assigned to an 
input from the Delta 1010, and then have the output of all tracks assigned 
to the lightpipe card (probably RME... guess I can't run multiples of a 
Terratec or something?).  So that like in real time, I record a track, then 
when/as I play it back right then and there, it's playing back through the 
DA7...  as I overdub another track along with it from the Delta 1010...

Now, if this won't work, I will rapidly switch back to Windows 98SE/Nuendo 
as it will do this just fine!  I mean I'm all for the user community and all 
that but I have to get some work done!

> So if you
> want to track with the delta 1010, then mix with the DA7 (thru
> the RME HDSP)  you will need to disconnect from JACK, and start it up again with
> the HDSP as the audio interface.  

so I get it... jack attaches to only ONE audio card.

how does this work with multiple Delta 1010's?  Or a Delta 1010 and a 1010LT 
or something?  I was under the impression that, pending sync with wordclock, 
it would "just work"...  not so with different-chipset cards?  Not so with 
any cards?

> There are ALSA hacks to attempt
> to make 2 audio interfaces show up as one, but i suspect it could
> be a nightmare with two different cards such as these, if not
> impossible.  Word clock sync would be involved too, if you were
> actually able to do it.

OK I'm interested in the ALSA hacks :)

> 
>  > 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.
> 
> The only real contenders are the RME cards:  the HDSP9652, or
> the Hammerfall Digi9652 (used, no longer in production).

Looking at that now...  too bad the MOTU stuff we already have won't work!! 
  Grr.  Guess I'll ebay the MOTU stuff and replace with RME.  If there's 
even any point.  This is not the answer I was looking for.


> Not sure, I need to check the specs on the DA7 with regard to
> MIDI implementation.

sweet....  see I don't know anything (obviously) about digital mixers... 
what I do know is that on Nuendo, in my friend's studio, this DA7 is like 
magic and makes life mega easy...  so that's what I'm after but in Linux, 
because we can't handle the track count limit and other things enforced by 
Windows or a major computer CPU (aka "noise-maker") upgrade.