[Ardour-Users] Delta1010 + Edirol FA-101

[Ben Bell]

I know this is something of a FAQ, but I'm really looking for recent real
world opinion more than a theoretical state of affairs.

For the last few years I've been working with a Delta 1010 as my audio
interface. I also have an Edirol FA-101 which was purchased in the early
days of FFADO but which, at the time, had too many issues with stability
and latency to be used setiously.

At the moment I'm finding myself starved of channels a little too often
and am wondering about either upgrading my soundcard (to what?) or trying
to run the 1010 and FA-101 together (clock-linked).

>From what I can tell the only way to do this would be to use the jack with
the FFADO driver and use alsa_in and alsa_out to bring in the Delta 1010.
This isn't ideal as the 1010 is comfortably wired as my primary interface
with the FA-101 more in a position to be used for occasional auxiliary
purposes. It's also a bit of a faff in Jack with one set of system inputs and
the rest showing up as a client.

Is anyone merging ALSA and FFADO cards successfully? Can it be done the
other way around?

I'm sure I'd be better off with a whole new multichannel card, but I'd
really rather not replace two perfectly good bits of hardware unless
there's a good reason.

Another possibility -- made more tempting by the fact that my analogue
mixing desk seems to have developed a fault -- is that I replace the whole
lot with something like a Phonic Helix Board with FFADO. Has anyone used 
a setup like this seriously, and in is it as stable as e.g. the Delta 1010?

And while I'm at it, I take it FFADO could only access one device at once
so I couldn't simply sync the FA-101 and something else?