I currently use Ardour in Ubuntu Studio. I also currently use a soundblaster audigy card and I want to upgrade.
I want to start recording a podcast and need to have the best hardware solution to record 4 to 5 mic’s at the same time in the same physical location. I know there are soundcards that can do this and have looked through the list that the Ardour site provides, but some of the solutions they give are outdated, especially the m-audio stuff. The microphones I might want to use are either the shure SM57 or SM58 or an xlr condensor mic or both. Will the sound cards give the “phantom power” needed for condenser mics? With Ardour and Jack, is it viable to output the sound from the mic to the headphones to monitor myself as I am speaking (so I don’t always speak loud when the headphones are on)?
Also, I use a USB condenser microphone and it works pretty darn good. It is a Samson C03U. In the past I attempted to record the sound from this mic and an analog mic that was part of a gaming headset connected to the mic in of my sound card at the same time and I could not do it. Jack was able find both inputs, but only allowed me to choose from one or the other, but not both at the same time. I have researched this problem and Ardour recognizes this problem as 2 separate soundcards and that there are problems with sync and phases; but there are still ways to do both at the same time.
I wanted to still explore this option and see for myself if the timing is waaaay off or something I can deal with. The problem is that I cannot find a solution to turn them both on so I can record from the 2 sources at the same time. How do you setup jack to send the 2 input signals to Ardour to record them at the same time on 2 different channels?
As far as soundcard compatibility is concerned, this is not just an Ardour question but an ALSA question. It might be worth searching or asking at linuxmusicians.com too. You should also check the ALSA sound card matrix, though it’s typically not up to date with the newest hardware.
The M-Audio and RME recommendations on this site are still valid.
Once you go beyond 4 channels, (a) nothing is cheap (b) RME have consistently excellent support for Linux and high quality hardware. I’ve seen Focusrite mentioned on this forums too, but I have no experience with them myself.
I use RME Multiface II with a separate 8-channel mic preamp (DAV BG.8) and they work really well.
You can monitor direct using the built in mixer, though I find that hard to understand and prefer to use Ardour for monitoring.
You can also always choose to monitor using Ardour. That gives you very easy control of the monitoring but you need to set the Jack buffer sizes small for low latency or you’ll hear a delay in the headphone sound.
I don’t think it’s possible at all to run multiple sound devices with Jack. The problem is that the sampling rates are not synchronised, and dropping samples will introduce unpleasant glitches in the sound, so Jack doesn’t even try.
I don't think it's possible at all to run multiple sound devices with Jack.
Although this isn’t recommended, it is entirely possible to do, and can be done using very high quality resampling that makes any glitches a non-issue. Still not recommended for professional work, but definitely possible and with good results.
If you are recording 5 people live and also need to get the audio to their headphones, I think you might need a physical mixer of some sort, either in the audio interface or a separate device. You can route audio through Ardour as Anahata wrote, but this introduces delay to the sound. It is very hard to speak when you hear your own voice delayed. You can minimize the delay by reducing Jack buffer size, but then you make the computer work very hard and you risk getting glitches in your recording. And if you route audio through Ardour, you cannot remove the delay completely even with a very small buffer size. If the buffer size is too small for reliable recording, then you get lots of clicks and pops in your audio and you probably notice this only after the recording is done and it’s too late.
The safe way to do it is to mix the audio going to headhones outside of the computer. This way you get rid of all possible delay and you get much more reliable recording because you can use a large buffer size in Jack / Ardour.
When the buffer size is small the computer moves audio to and from the sound card in smaller slices. The timing of transfering these slices must be exact, so if some other process on the computer happens to stress the processor or hard disk, the audio transfer time slot might get missed and audio gets lost, causing clicks in the audio. This is true for all audio applications, not just Ardour.
If you can find a sound card that has this mixer built in, then you can get the sound of the mics out of the sound card via the headphone jack of the device. The sound coming out of the headphone jack usually does not have any delay at all.
I own a Presonus 1818VSL which has 8 mic inputs with phantom power, but unfortunately the “hardware mixer” in the device is built using a DSP that does not work in Linux. The sound card can be used for recording 8 mics in Ardour (Linux), but as the devices mixer does not work, you don’t hear the sound you are recording through the headphone jack. You can only hear what you are recording by routing audio through the computer and Ardour and back to the sound card and this audio always has some delay in it, there is no way around it.
Although this isn't recommended, it is entirely possible to do, and can be done using very high quality resampling that makes any glitches a non-issue.
Do you have any links to any guides on how to do this? anything you can give appreciated. Thank you for you help.
The Zoom H6 seems good. it has four XLR inputs, and “stereo microphone module”. you can get an extra two XLR inputs (without phantom power) with en optional XLR module to replace the mic-module. http://www.zoom.co.jp/products/h6
I forgot to say that even if it is sold as a portable recoreder, it can be a USB audio interface as well. And it is class compliant, and seems to work on linux right out of the box, all six input channels.
That require a separate special RME firewire card, correct? Would using TRS mics through something like affect the quality of the recording? Can you use all 8 inputs at the same time?
You might want to look at the Focusrite Scarlett range. I have a Scarlett 18i8, which has 8 analog inputs, 4 of which have microphone pre-amps. Since kernel 3.19 (as installed with Ubuntu 15.04), the device is said to be fully functional - I still haven’t figured out some things, but its hardware mixer works. That mixer is still a bit awkward to use because the existing mixer apps (alsamixer, qasmixer) use a generic layout and show all 144 faders from left to right. But it should allow you to route mixes to the two headphone outputs or an external multi headphone amp directly and latency-free.