[ardour-users] A decent sound card for Ardour

[Sampo Savolainen]

Hi John,

I'm very saddened to hear you are having so much trouble. I think you are
only a tiny bit away from getting it working - i actually think it's already
working for you.

Quoting John Emmas <johne53 at tiscali.co.uk>:

> > 3) When you play audio from a jack connected application, do you see
> > levels in the second section of the hdsmpixer called 'playback'.
> >
> That one's difficult to answer because at the moment, I don't know
> enough
> about Linux audio to know which applications are jack aware. 
> However....
> OpenSUSE - hdspmixer isn't installed yet.  I only installed the OS last
> night.  I'll come back to you later on that one.
> Ubuntu - If I open hdspmixer and then double-click on a known sound file
> (such as a WAV) it opens another application called Totem Movie Player.
> This shows a progress bar and the meters show a signal (in the middle
> section only) of hdspmixer.  Jack isn't installed yet under Ubuntu and
> AFAIK, Totem Movie Player doesn't need it.

If you see a signal only in the middle section, it is telling you that a
signal is playing back, but it's not routed anywhere. This is just a
question of mixer settings - everything is working just fine!

Just use hdspmixer to route that signal somewhere. Click on the white box
below the strip you see movement and select the outputs you want the signal
to be routed to (outputs 1 and 2, i guess). Then raise the fader up and you
will hear sound. Trust me. If you see a signal in hdspmixer, it's there. 

You just need to set up the mixer. For some reason it just hasn't set up
sane defaults (that might be in a menu somewhere but I don't have access to
hdspmixer right this moment so i could check).

> I've done all that but nothing will make the signal appear on those
> bottom
> meters.  Along the way, I did realise that the routing doesn't actually
> work
> until you've routed a channel and then moved a fader.  However, in an
> earlier post, I mentioned that there's a loudpseaker icon on
> my menu bar.  If I click on it, a fader drops down, supposedly to adjust
> my
> audio volume.  That fader is permanently set at minimum and can't be
> increased.  I can't help feeling that this is the cause of my problem.

That control is meant to work with normal consumer level soundcards with a
"master volume" control. If you are only using an RME card equipped with a
matrix mixer, i strongly recommend removing that applet from the bar. Not
because it would break anything - just because it is confusing in this setup.

This is equivalent to having such a control (the usual speaker icon with a
simple one-fader volumen control) in windows for an RME card. There is no
single correct answer to which volume it should control.


  Sampo