Hi there,
Before going into more specific issue report, I wanted to inquire about what the current state of control surface is supposed to be. Is controlling ardour from any generic midi device supposed to work flawlessly ?
I’m learning ardour for a few weeks, and it has been a polished experience so far. I’ve installed it on a fresh ubuntu 14.04, using kxstudio-debian ppa. Recording audio was perfect, just like recording midi routed to external synth app, sending it back to ardour as audio, mastering the whole thing, no problem.
Then, I decided to give a shot at lv2 plugins loaded directly into ardour, like calf organ and samplv1 (coupled with midifilters “key range filter”). I’ve controlled midi notes and sequences of those using a midi keyboard (an umx490) and a sequencer (an electribe esx). Again, it was flawless, getting things done was my only concern.
Then I tried controlling lv2 plugins (still calf organ and samplv1) using my midi devices through control surface, and it got messy. I plug in my midi source within qjackctl to the midi control in port of ardour, but most of time, it won’t just work as is. I C-middleclick a control, it will ask for a cc, I’ll move a fader and popup will instantly disappear (which seems to indicated it has been recognized), but moving the fader then would not affect ardour. I have to unplug/replug my midi device / restart ardour (I haven’t identified a reproducible pattern yet, except restarting things) and control will be effective, with some glitches (I sometime move a fader half way without anything happening, and I get the control back as soon as I return it to its initial position).
That was a problem, but it’s still usable (once I have control, it can stay put the whole track recording long). What was more a problem was that, if I tried to record an automation, adding automation curve under track (through the automation section in track context menu) and setting its state to “write”, ardour would instantly crash when I move a fader while recording. My first reaction was that it must have been some bad combination of plugins or [whatever], and I tried a brand new session. But it did always the same : hard to get control, and instant crash when I get it and begin to record. Both esx behind a midi/usb converter and umx490 connected directly through usb produce the same result.
At this point, I decided to download the latest release from ardour.com, in case it was a bug specific to version from package manager and it had been fixed since then (and because I saw there has been indeed several releases since the one I used). Installer told me my cpu governer was not fit for proper usage of ardour, so I turned all cpus from ondemand governor to performance one, for the time of my session (but I would be surprised it causes such crash, I would expect mostly sound glitches, from a frequency scaling problem).
Anyway, I’ve noticed quite a difference after upgrade. It would not crash instantly when I move a fader. But I won’t have a chance to reach the end of a song without a crash if I was trying to control automation, be it in write state or even manual state, this time.
Now, I’m wondering two things :
- is it supposed to work just yet ?
- is it a problem from ardour or from my system ?
I don’t expect to see my problem solved here, and I’m fully aware the forum is not a bug tracker, but I wanted to be sure it’s worth creating an issue and I’m not just missing some obvious config. In that regard, here is more information :
- ubuntu 14.04 (less than two weeks old)
- ardour-3.5.403
- jackd-1.9.10
- midi driver : seq
- current user in audio group with proper realtime permissions