[Ardour-Users] Ardour 2.8.5 released

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> John Rigg wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:30:36AM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I was struck looking at the SAWStudio site that they have a product
>>> for house mixing. $500 and it allows you to create individual monitor
>>> mixes for every set of headphones on the stage. (Assuming I understood
>>> what I was reading.) When this conversation popped up last year I
>>> mentioned the idea of creating a specific version of Ardour for use as
>>> an outboard LADSPA hosting in-studio but maybe something like a live
>>> house mix version of Ardour would be another form that takes very
>>> little customization and goes right at that $500 market?
>>>
>>
>> I think you'd have a hard time convincing most live sound engineers that
>> a digital system running on commodity computer gear was reliable enough
>> for mixing live gigs. In a live situation there's no room at all for
>> crashes or other problems.
>
> PS:
>
> I was googleing on German for "professionelle digitale mischpulte", because
> digital mixing consoles are seemingly used on stage and that's to funny, I
> was linked to something about Harrison.
>
> Mark's idea seems to be up to date, computers seems to be used on stage too.
> Modern digital (live) mixing consoles aren't stand alone solutions all the
> time, they indeed seem to need the additional PC or Mac.
>
> I don't have any knowledge about this, it's just the result of using google
> and remembering that I was surprised when I saw a concert on television.

The 'computer' doesn't have to be a 'PC'. It could be an embedded
system running Linux inside a box that looks like anything, including
a mixer.

The last Yes show I saw was 100% automated - sound, lights,
everything. All the VUs were just gadgets on CRTs built into some sort
of console. the console did have faders. I couldn't get close enough
to see who the manufacturer was but it was my impression it was just a
some sort of microprocessor based system.

I don't see why a Linux based machine couldn't be put into a very
specific sort of console box. No extra apps. Nothing gets loaded
except mixing templates. My Linux boxes don't crash much, and
certainly don't crash when Ardour is setup and all I'm doing is moving
faders. Ardour running on a little embedded Linux box with not much
disk interface - maybe just a 60GB SSD because it's not recording -
and a couple of RME interfaces would give more than enough channels
for most bands.

But again, it's just an idea. Linux is very stable once you set it up
and don't let mix-monkeys install apps and change things.

- Mark