Re: [LAU] Ardour track question

On Thu, Sep 09, 2010 at 07:33:08AM -0500, Jonathan E. Brickman wrote:

> I think I am missing some essential understanding of Ardour. I have
> Ardour set up in default manner (Fedora 13), one Master bus, and have
> added one track. The input of the one track has been successfully set
> to Linux Sampler; when I get sound out of LS, the meter in the track
> moves nicely. However, when I change the metering point in the track
> from "input" to either "pre" or "post", the meter doesn't move at all.
> (Obviously there are more consequences too, but this is the boil-down.)
> There are no plugins in all. Recording does work, the wave data is
> clearly visible. What am I doing wrong?

Nothing :-)

A track strip in Ardour's mixer actually represents two signal paths:

1. From the input (jack port) to the track being recorded.
2. From the track to a mix.

(2) goes via inserts, fader, pan, etc. to wherever
    you want it, usually the master strip.

(1) is actually trivial, it's just a fixed path without
    any controls, and the only thing you can do with it
    is measure it (meter set to 'input').

If you want to hear new tracks while they are being recorded,
select options->monitoring->ardour_does_monitoring. Then, when
a track is enabled for recording, its input signal is copied
to (2) as well.

Some background:

In the days of multitrack recorders, a studio mixer would
actually consist of two mixers combined into one console.
One feeding the tape recorder, via as many groups as you
had tape tracks, and the second mixing signals from the tape
recorder into stereo. The ability to mix _before_ tape was
essential in the early days when you had maybe just 8 tracks.

There were two ways to organise this.

In the first, 'split' architecture you would have a full-
featured mixer (EQ, inserts, large faders, etc), that could
be switched between the two roles of 'feeding the tape' or
'mixing the tape to stereo'. While recording (when this mixer
was feeding the tape), you had a separate simple mixer to make
control room and monitoring mixes. Later, while mixing, the
channels of this monitor mixer could often be used as effect
returns.

The second 'in line' architecture was pioneered by MCI in the
early 1970's and quicly copied by all major console builders
(today this would probably result in a patent war). In fact all
mixers I've ever used were of this type. There were two key
ideas to this:

- combine a channel of the 'main' and 'monitor' mixers into
  the same physical strip instead of having the two systems
  side by side (so you'd have two faders in each strip), and
- allow the two parts to swap roles.

So you could either use the 'full' mixer to feed the tape
and the simple one for monitoring (similar to the first
architecture), or you could opt to use the 'monitor' mixer
to feed the tracks and use the 'full' one for monitoring
even during recording. The latter method would mean that
when all tracks were recorded, your mixer would be almost
set up ready to do the final mix.

Ardour's setup is similar to the latter use, with a 'pre
tape' mixer that is actually trivial - it just copies each
input to a track. If you want more complex 'pre tape' mixing
you need to create additional 'bus' strips.
 
Ciao,

-- 
FA
There are three of them, and Alleline.
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