Dry track -> Guitarix -> Clean track -> Master => No align

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

I’m using Ardour to record both dry and wet guitar tracks. Basically, the path is

Audio interface -> G1 dry track -> Guitarix input -> G1 wet track -> Master

RaySession
RaySession1198×831 65.2 KB

I’m getting the dreaded “No Align” warning and I have no idea what to do about it.

Logs read

[WARNING]: Latence ambiguë pour le port 'G1 - Dry/audio_out 1' (16, 224)

I can’t tell for sure when it first occurred. Most probably when I migrated from Debian Bullseye (Ardour 6.5.0) to Bookworm (Ardour 7.3.0). FWIIW, this migration came with the move to Pipewire.

Am I doing things wrong? I’ve been doing this a lot before and I never noticed any alignment issue.

This happened with old sessions I loaded. The setup shown above is a new session created from scratch for the sake of testing.

Thanks.

#2

You could use guitarix as plugin inside Ardour this day’s.

#3

tl;dr: you could route as follows:

Scarlett Capture → Ardour Dry Track
Scarlett Capture → gx-head-amp → Ardour Wet Track

Ardour and gx-head-amp run in sequence. Each app processes audio once every audio process cycle. With your current connections the following happens:

At time T:

  • Ardour runs and records the dry signal, and send the signal out to gx-head-amp
  • gx-head-amp runs and processes the signal

Then, one process cycle later at T+1:

  • Ardour receives the output of gx-head-amp from the previous cycle (time T) and records it on the wet-track.
  • … while the dry track has new data (T+1)

The dry and wet signal do not align.

Alternatively you could indeed use gx plugin. If you still want to wet record, Ardour allows that.

Capture → Ardour Dry Track
Capture → Ardour Wet Track, load the gx-plugin, and set the track to wet recording.

Right-click in the processor box and set Disk-I/O to “post Fader” and load the guitarix plugin pre-Fader:
image

A third option would be to load the guitarix plugin as I/O Plugin. It will then show up as dedicated Input see The Ardour Manual - I/O Plugins

#4

Thank you guys for your replies and for the explanation.

Indeed I saw guitarix can now be used as plugin and I have the feeling this would be the way to go, ultimately. It would even address Using Guitarix with Ardour.

I’d like to try this later, though. Because I’m updating my setup incrementally and I’d like to work with my existing sessions with as little changes as possible. And, confessing lazyness, because I get my software preferentially from Debian repos, then from Librazik if needed and manually as last resort, so I figured the more I wait, the less manual steps involved.

Regarding my setup, I actually only record dry and use the wet track mostly for monitoring and exporting. Although I might be tempted to also record the wet track to sort of freeze the effects to a sound I like (e.g. in case I’d change Guitarix settings and lose that sound).

Scarlett Capture → Ardour Dry Track
Scarlett Capture → gx-head-amp → Ardour Wet Track

This would mean recording the effects on-the-fly. I wouldn’t be able to re-run the track and change the effects dynamically (sort of reamping).

Maybe my question boils down to how do you apply effects on one (dry) track and record this into another (wet) track?

I shall dig into Guitarix plugin indeed, but the question still stands for other software that wouldn’t be available as plugin, right?

(Should I understand that the issue has always been there, except I wasn’t warned? Because all those years, I never noticed anything, so until I get better ears I might even be able to live with it.)

#5

If you wanted to change the tone settings later you could always disconnect the dry track from the master bus, connect the output of that track to Guitarix, then connect the output of Guitarix to a new wet track.

#6

If you wanted to change the tone settings later you could always disconnect the dry track from the master bus, connect the output of that track to Guitarix, then connect the output of Guitarix to a new wet track.

Dry track is not connected to master bus. Or maybe you mean disconnect input from audio interface. I thought this setup was what caused the issue in the first place. Unless the disconnection from input makes a difference.

I can’t figure out a workflow that maintains the features I used to have, everything being wired once and then just choosing disk or input for each track. Which make me wonder if I’m trying to find convoluted ways of doing what other users do the right way.

#7

Yep.

Don’t use JACK, use a plugin in Ardour: Dry Track → guitarix plugin on dry-track → Wet track.

–

PS. Note that using external gear to re-amp works fine (JACK reports latency of physical I/O).

PPS. If you have to use JACK, you can use an insert (The Ardour Manual - Inserts) on the Dry track:

Dry-Track → insert [ → guitarix jack app → ] → Wet-Track

#8

Thank you so much for the detailed explanations.

I thought being able to route stuff to and from anywhere was part of the coolness of JACK. Looks like this was a bit simplistic.

Means I can still use my old sessions and live with it and then my next step is to improve the workflow, ideally using the Gx plugin, which comes with all the benefits of using it as a plugin.

If I encounter issues while doing so, I’ll post where appropriate.

Thanks again everyone.

#9

Why does the connection diagram show a connection from the dry track to gx head amp, and also from gx head fx to gx head amp? Or is that just a quirk of the drawing, and it is actually showing gx head amp out to gx head fx in?

#10

Yes, that’s it.

Dry → head amp → head fx → Wet

Indeed, drawing unclear.

#11

That’s the way guitarix works. 2 elements.