I suffer badly from RSI in my arms and have for a while thought about getting an analog console to work with despite having worked with computers for music all the time. My thinking is that I’m going to get a good board with good EQs and dynamics section so I don’t have to reach for many plug-ins and thus preventing further injury to my arms. With this in mind I realized I could might as well make it a Linux DAW, something that I’ve been wanting to run for some time now. I’m thinking about getting one of the RME HDSP cards for this as they’re in fact rather cheap and I don’t know a lot of high-end cards that work under Linux.
Anyone running a setup like this? Or just a nice Linux/Ardour setup with a console or a nice board? What’s your take on it? Everything playing nicely? Etc, etc…
I use a AMD64 with FedoraCore6+PlanetCCRMA, with a RME MultifaceII (which I really want to change for a RME Digiface) and an Adcon Marian as AD/DA converter. They are connected to a SoundCraft Mixer Desk where I get dinamics, effects, eq, and mix. After that i send the sound back to the computer to record the final mix with timemachine.
Recently i got a BCF-2000 wich work reasonably well (there are some unconfortable behaviour yet) to get some confort at working with ardour.
That’s good to hear. How is the latency between Ardour, the RME and the board?
I’ve been looking at the Soundcraft Ghost, but in that price class I would have to look at the new Toft ATB as well. I have a BCF-200, haven’t tried it with Ardour on my Mac yet, will try it on the Linux computer when it arrives though.
I tried to get the lower latency for my computer setting qjackctl. I can’t remember the exact parameters and the final amount of latency, but about 10 - 20 msecs. Until some projects have 28 tracks I dont got trouble with latency, may be because I don’t charge the cpu with realtime plugins.
Timemachine is a little program for jack to record the sound through that server, it have the availability to record from 8 or 10 second before you push the button, really interesting.
I hope to listen about your succcessful experiences.
Yep,
RME HDSP9652 and Behringer DDX3216…it is more of a hybrid console, but still gives me midi controls via faders and pan pots. The RME is absolutely awesome…can’t fault it.
I’m running a SoundCraft board with direct outs into my soundcard (was a FirePod, soon to be a Delta 1010LT), and use the console for “hardware” monitoring. I bring a stereo pair (carrying the whole cue mix) back from the soundcard to a set of channels on the desk, and use the board’s busses to mix in whatever I’m recording for monitoring purposes. This way, I don’t have to worry about latency at all, because I never have to send sound into then back out of the computer just to hear it.