[Ardour-Users] A3: Silence and session load weirdness after re-open

[Q]

On 24/04/13 14:15, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 9:10 AM, Q <lists at quirq.ukfsn.org
>     Okay, if you're going to be smart-arsed about it, there were two sends
>
>
> I'm not trying to be smart arsed.

Okay, I'm sorry. What you were trying to say didn't come across terribly 
well and I took it the wrong way.

> There are often more complexities to
> these things than users realize, that's all.
>
>     -- I couldn't remember whether I'd used a send from Bus 1 to Bus 2
>     or just hooked the output of Bus 1 directly to the input of Bus 2,
>     in addition to the send from Bus 2 to Bus 1 which closed a loop.
>
>
> it would make no difference: there are still two connections that are
> involved in forming the fhe loop, and they both have levels associated
> with them. i can see no reason or method for ardour to identify one of
> them as the one that "creates" the loop other than order of creation.
> this is not possible to determine when loading the session, so if you
> had readjusted the -inf level to some other value, ardour has no way of
> understanding what to do at session load time.
>

Okay, I understand and I think I had partially grasped what you were 
getting at.

I accept that Ardour can't determine which connection "closed the loop" 
from the user's perspective, nor can it determine whether the loop is 
controlled or uncontrolled and that there is no difference between 
creating a loop with direct connections or with sends, or a combination. 
Although my take on what Axel was saying was that, if you create a loop 
using one or more sends, there's a little more safety with send levels 
being -inf when created -- it's when you turn them up that things could 
get out of hand.

Ultimately, how a loop is created is a red herring, it's how the loop is 
acted upon that I wanted to highlight.

My point was, that feedback loops can be created on purpose and if you 
have created one -- however you've achieved it -- for a particular 
effect, you don't want audio to be disabled, at any point.

I could see the value in Ardour disabling audio immediately that a loop 
was created, but there seems little point in disabling audio only when 
the session is re-opened, by which time damage could already have been done.

Q