Re: [LAU] Building a DAW

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 03:29:09PM -0400, Ricus Vincente wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 19:37 +0200, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
>
> Fons,
>
> > > Say 48 in and 48 out, or even 64?
> > >
> > > Does the RME hardware allow for that?
> >
> > I've been using MADI cards from RME, each of them provides
> > 64 ins and 64 outs and they work a charm. For interfacing
> > to analog you need external converters (first to/from ADAT,
> > the RME ADI648) and then to/from whatever your budget allows.
> >
> > The cheapest converters are Behringer, performance is not
> > top grade but if you use only the line inputs you can
> > modify them so that the line signals goes directly to
> > the converters instead of being attenuated and added to
> > the mic input. Signal quality goes up considerably by
> > doing this, and you get rid of the variable gain.
>
> If I were building a studio for myself I would purchase something like
> a new Neve 5088 desk, and use Ardour with RME, and Mytek converters.
> And when I win the lottery, I will. :-)
>
> > Regarding Ardour it sure can do the job, but coming from
> > a 'real' (or 'reel') multitrack you will have to adapt a
> > bit. No more rocking the reels to find the exact punch-in
> > spot...
>
> I only rock reels when I razor-blade edit. I'm not completely
> unfamiliar with digital audio software, but every studio I ever
> engineered in has been analog. I do some mastering in Sound Forge.
>
> > Provided you have enough physical ins/outs, the tracks
> > will autoconnect to them, so you don't even have to
> > open the mixer window if you just use it as a tape
> > machine, just create a template with mono outs for
> > each track.
>
> Ideally I'd like to submix the drums down to a stereo pair of outs so I
> only use 2 channels on my console, same for guitars, percussion
> overdubs, etc...
>
> > You can set up the tracks as 'tape' tracks which means
> > that if you punch the original signal will be overwritten
> > as would happen on a real tape. The alternative is the
> > standard mode, where a new region will be created (on
> > the same track) if you punch, and you can edit the
> > transitions later.
>
> I'd be comfortable with either. After all, they made records with
> destructive editing for decades. :-)
>
> > Regarding punching, I've found Ardour on the unstable
> > side when doing that, even recent versions.
>
> Well that changes things considerably for me. Punch-ins (and outs) are
> a fundamental function for any recording device like this. Why is it
> unstable in this area?
>
> From what I've seen there should be a workaround for this, right?
> Record another track, or region in the same track and drag the regions
> to fit around the punch. No?
>

I have not seen any instability with punch ins on Ardour, but I have had Ardour rejected out-of-hand by a pro studio guy because it doesn't have a pre-roll feature. He wanted to set a punch in point, type in a number of bars/seconds/frames for pre-roll, and have the transport start exactly at the same spot every time he hit stop and then record/play. I tried moving the Start marker to the "pre roll" point, which I thought worked pretty well, but apparently that wasn't good enough, alas.

> I just installed Ardour on my desktop at home. I don't do any audio
> work at home so the machine is running Ubuntu (not studio) and it's
> primarily used for surfing and other basic productivity activities. It
> doesn't have any special audio hardware in it. I installed it to begin
> familiarizing myself with it.
>
> Rich...
>
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Received on Fri Jun 5 12:15:02 2009