[Ardour-Users] input monitoring

[David Adler]

Hi Fred!

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 7:54 PM, fred wrote:
>
> Hi, why not another approach :
>
>> At first, during "composition", Ardour would
>> just be used as an eight channel mixer, with
>> some effect sends per channel
>>
>
> *create 8 MIDI tracks in A3, feeded with your MIDI-HW-keyboard
> *OUTS of these tracks goes to synths & samplers
> *OUTS of synths... to 8 (or more) audio tracks
> *auto input is ON
> *the audio tracks goes to busses
> *SENDS in audio tracks goes pre or post fader to "FX BUSSES"
> *"FX BUSSES" OUTS goes to the busses where plugins are living
> (there you can name the busses, tracks, like :
> -guitar
> -GUIT-TO-REV
> -REV-GUIT... like to change the case for BUS, it's more visual,
> and you can this way have 2  with the same name))
> *and of course all busses - but not FX ONES- goes to the master bus

I've now installed and had a look at ardour3, in order
to try the suggested setup. I must admit though that
I'd have to learn quite a bit more to familiarise with it.
Nice to have it though, for sure I'll migrate to v3 one
day.

I quite like the effect routing you described, i.e. feeding
the sends to per-channel-FX BUSSES before they go
to the bus where the effects/plugins live. Though this
adds another eight buses to the session (and probably
latency(?)), it is an improvement in usability towards
having a separate window for each send.
Not too important for me though, 'cause I use a hardware
Midi controller for accessing the sends' faders.

>> Whenever DSP load approaches the limit due
>> to the number of softsynths/samplers, I'd like
>> to record some of them to tracks in Ardour.
>> Thus finally, when composition is done, I'd have
>> eight recorded tracks that I can mix down to
>> stereo.
>>
>
> with the way describe up there, you will have acces to FX and
> audio tracks fader automation to mix in a better mood,
> and you can record the output of synths at any moment !
>

This is also the case with the setup suggested by Giso.
As I am postponing migration to a3, I'll stick with that
one for a while.

>> * when recording this way, all other synth
>>   tracks are silent (which is tolerable when
>>   recording a synth driven by a sequencer,
>>   but this makes it impossible to play-through
>>   and record an analogue instrument along with
>>   the synths.
>>
>
> Strange, are you sure you can't deal with that ???
> *some auto input stuff ?
>

I can't, that was the whole point of posting my question
in the first place.

To have tracks output the sound arriving at their input
while transport is rolling, I need to set 'Options' ->
'Monitoring' to 'Ardour does monitoring', disable
'Auto Input' and arm all tracks for recording.

Thus, in order to record only *one* track, all others
can not be record-enabled, of course, and are silent
consequently, so I can't record audio while listening
to synths playing through tracks.

However, this is solved by using the track&bus
combination Giso suggested.

>> (2)
>> * create eight buses and eight tracks in Ardour
>> * connect each synth to a bus and to a track
>>
>
> Remark the busses comes at last in "my" connects plan
>>
>> Downsides:
>> * complicated
>>
>
> Well, if you use always that set, you can easily create a template in
> Ardour,
> so you have to do it only one time in a life :)

...maybe more often, each time new versions of ardour arrive. :)
But yes, using templates is a wise thing to do.

>> * more CPU-usage, due to the extra routing
>>
>
> not so much...

Agreed.

>
>> * fader settings of the corresponding
>>   buses' and tracks' effect sends must always
>>   be the same.
>>
>
> That can't happend if you use a FX bus feeded only 1 time

Yes, as written in my previous mail, this is a none-issue,
easily solved by proper routing. My mistake.

>>
>>
>> Anyone a better idea?
>
> Not sure it's said better, different yep ! Hope That Helped, sorry for the
> book !!

No problen, sorry for the delayed answer.
(I had to read a book first :), and compile&try a3)

best,
david