DAW Suggestions

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

Im running Ubuntu Studio and am doing a lot of on site recording.

Thinking of getting a DAW unit/desk

First of all… will it work and if so… what will work ?

Up to now I have been using a portable 8 track SD recorder (2 tracks at a time) but in the end - it ends up in Ardour…

Thinking of upgrading to a portable recorder with added channels… or…, a laptop running Ardour with a DAW desk.

I know NOTHING about DAW other than it offers the chance to record directly into Ardour

Im keen on a DAW Desk rather than a I/O unit for the hands on mix/eq ability and hands on monitoring options for the artists.

but…is it an easy road ?

#2

I am not sure, but I suspect there is a misunderstanding of what a DAW is here. Ardour is a DAW. Not sure what you mean when you say you are getting a DAW unit/desk.

 Seablade
#3

Sorry !.. yes… I have been wrong. :slight_smile:

I thought that the hardware be it USB2 or Firewire was called the DAW… But now I look at (digital audio workstation) in the title it makes sence ! :slight_smile:

So… what I am talking about is a mixing desk I can use as a interface with Ardour and the rest of the input stuff such as Mic’s.

Using Linux now for a few years I have learned its best to ask what exuipment works first… so looking for suggestions of hardware in the £500 to £1000 region with no less than 8 mic inputs.

Must be able to sent the artists a FX mix with a dry take parallel into Ardour.

#4

try a delta 1010 (or 1010lt) from m-audio. The former is about $500 and the latter about $200. The only thing is that you’ll need a computer with a pci slot open (desktop pc). You can probably get a cheap dell or similar for about $300, and anything made in the last couple years with 2GB RAM will be adequate.

#5

I am using the M-Audio 1010LT in a desktop PC as tracking computer. First I’ve used a P4 with 1.7 GHz and 1 Gb RAM - which worked fine for tracking and recording simultanuous, but didn’t work with effects. Now I am using an AMD Duron which has a little bit more horsepower and works even fine with some effects. (Altough I would like to record as “clean” as possible)

For mixing I am using my desktop PC at home (Core2Quad with 8 Gig RAM) with an M-Audio Audiophile 2496.

This setup works very fine for me.

#6

@its_jon

Then going off your first post, is it safe to assume you are looking for a laptop solution(Which the above posts are not?) or will a desktop solution work for you as well?

If you are looking at a laptop solution, have a look at ffado.org for a list of supported devices there. That can give you a good starting point.

If a desktop solution, see here… http://ardour.org/realfaq#audioio

 Seablade
#7

Great… the M-Audio Delta 1010 looks like the kit for me. Or 2 of them to give me 16 tracks.

What about drivers for this kit… does linux need any code to get it working ?

I have a cube proportioned 19" ABS case I was thinking of building a PC/Linux recording system into.

I assume £300 for the PC and Monitor. £200 for a Delta 1010 and £400 for a Soundcraft M8 Mixer £100 for a Behringer powerplay headphone mixer.

However…
Having read a bit more… (im on a quick learning curve) What do I need to make this work ?
http://www.allen-heath.co.uk/zed/zed-R16.asp
???
2 RME Adat Inputs installed in my linux pc maybe ???

#8

Delta 1010 works out of the box with Linux.
Getting two of them to work together is not quite so simple, but there’s a thread about it here somewhere and it certainly can be done.

#9

if you get the 1010 (which has mic pres for each channel in), you won’t necessarily need a mixing desk, as you can do all the mixing on the software side. The board you’re looking at has firewire out, but would need to be supported in linux to work that way, which I’m not sure about. Hooking up two 1010s does take a little work, but is really not all that hard…

#10

The 1010 does not have mic pres on its inputs, it is line level only. http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta1010.html

#11

chrisg: the 1010lt has mic pres built in on inputs 1 and 2, and the 1010 comes with a breakout box that has pres on all 8 inputs.

#12

@macinnisrr

Don’t have access to a 1010 myself, but the breakout box sure looks like it doesn’t have pres on the inputs, and the marketing material linked to above and on various sales sites indicates it is line level only to my knowledge.

Seablade

#13

@macinnisrr. You are right, the 1010lt does have pres, but the 1010 definitely doesn’t, it is line level only.

#14

another quick note on the 1010 (not LT) is that recent hardware versions seem to not work quite right with rates above 48kHz using recent kernels. At least, I was getting ~ -30dB of noise on every input channel until I figured out what was missing and patched my kernel. This is with a newer card marked Rev E on the board.

#15

@peterasmith: please provide versions numbers for all the software involved. Claims have been made before on these forums about the Rev E delta 1010, and they turned out to be severely out of date and very misleading. We need to know if you have a new issue, or just a reincarnation of an old one.

#16

@paul, I posted the relevant information and my local solution about a week ago on alsa-user:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=26819326

I’m running a gentoo 2.6.34-r6 kernel. All other alsa packages at 1.0.23. Tests done using alsamixer to route any H/W In to H/W Out 0 or 1. quite noticeable noise on my speakers.

I saw the same effect with the ice1712 drivers compiled in or as modules, as well as using the modules from the 1.0.23 alsa-driver build.

Apparently this noise issue (at least for my case) comes from not setting the DFS bit(fast/slow sample rate mode?) when rate>48000.