[ardour-users] some newbie questions

[Kevin Seghetti]

Forgive me if any of these have already been answered, I did some
searching first but didn't find any answers to these questions:

1. Is there a way to enable software monitoring for only the tracks
which have record enabled?
(long version explaining above question):

I am using a TeraTech EWS88D (light pipe I/O), so I have 8 inputs. When
recording drums I use all 8. Then I go back and start to lay in other
tracks, I have to re-use the inputs for other things (say guitar), so I
add new tracks which are set to the same inputs, and only record-enable
the new tracks. This works fine while actually recording, but when the
transport is stopped both the drum track and the new guitar track echo
the input, and since they have different effects chains it doesn't sound
right. (I am trying to use entirely software effects for my guitar, so I
spend quite a bit of time with the transport stopped 

I realize I could just un-assign the 8 drum track inputs, but that seems
like a pain if I want to go back and re-record the drum part.

The problem I am having is whenever the transport is stopped the drum
tracks still pass the incoming audio for the input they were assigned
to, even though record is not selected for that track.

2. Software monitoring seems to go away if the transport is playing,
even on tracks with record enabled (it comes back if actually
recording). Is this intentional? Seems like a bug to me. I like to play
along with existing tracks for a few takes before recording, and can't
use the digital effects while doing so because of this (so I end up
recording instead, and having to delete the scratch recordings). 

3. Is there a way to save an entire effects chain (but not the entire
channel)? To get a decent guitar sound requires stacking several effects
(gate, amp, distortion, compressor, reverb). Once I have a sound I like,
I want to be able to quickly import it into new songs. 

4. Suggestion: Since most effects have small UIs, it would be cool to
have an 'effects rack' mode where the UIs for all of the effects on a
channel where stacked up vertically, so one could easily adjust the
settings in all of them. 

5. Suggestion: The selection process in the plugin interface in the
mixer works differently than most GUI list handlers, making it less
intuitive. Has the standard list interface (single click selects a
single item and deselects all others, shift-click selects all items
between currently selected item and newly clicked item, ctrl-click
toggles selected state of newly clicked item) been considered?

Thanks for a great product, 

-- 
Kevin Seghetti: E-Mail: kts at tenetti.org, HTTP: www.tenetti.org
GPG public key: http://tenetti.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view.cgi/KevinSeghetti/GPGKey
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