I’m trying to understand routing with Scarlett 4i4 4th Gen GUI and Ardour’s own routing
The most useful thing you can do with routing built into an audio interface is mixing the input signal with the playback signal (for example playing by Ardour) so that you can hear what you are playing at the same time you are recording without needing additional hardware.
For example, if you are recording a synthesizer, the signal from the synthesizer may be connected to the audio interface, which converts to digital data and is sent to the computer. To hear what you are playing the data will have to be bundled together into groups of data values (because general purpose computers process audio data in small batches, rather than continuously), sent to Ardour, and Ardour in turn will have to take that bundle of audio data, perform any required processing, and send the data bundles back to the audio interface, and the audio interface will have to convert back to an electrical signal to send to your headphones.
All of that back and forth adds delay, which may or may not be noticeable or bothersome, depending on several factors that it would be nice to not have to worry about.
Using the routing inside the interface you can have the data from the input sent directly back out to an output without being sent to the computer first. If you have already recorded some audio, the interface can mix together the audio being played from the computer with the audio you are currently playing. Traditionally that routing of audio was performed by an analog mixer, which is still a possibility, but that means you have to buy more equipment and get it connected and learn how to operate it.
The older Scarlett Solo interfaces just have a simple switch for input monitoring on or off (with no way to adjust the balance between the new signal and the playback signal, although I think that capability may now exist in the 4th gen Solo), but using the sophisticated routing capabilities in the larger interfaces lets you record more than one signal at a time, and control the balance between the different inputs mixed down to a single output (or likely a pair of outputs for stereo).
I assume you have read the simple user guide at the github project page:
Do you have specific questions about routing, or were just trying to understand when you would use routing in the interface?
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