External Controllers and some ideas

Hi.

My question: did You (ardour developers) think about full integration of ardour with profesjonal external controllers, like M-AUDIO ProjectMIX? For me it’s hard to complete fully functional DAW w/o controllers like this. Maybe good idea is dedicated controller for ardour. I know - costs, but dedicated controller can make ardour more popular.

Other ideas:

  • utility for correct intonation, pitch and other vocal properties (like celemony melodyne)

  • MIDI. I know, that this feature will be in ardour 3. But i have questions: do You think about some virtual instruments integrated into ardour? VST don’t works so good, so working on MIDI tracks with “native” instruments (synths, samplers, …) will be good idea. Good feature is assinging virtual instrument to MIDI track, instead of connectiong ardour MIDI track to external applications (integration into one application is one of most important things for me). One better option instead of instruments compiled into ardour is using DSSI format.

  • drum machine. I like to work in one complex application. Nowdays I must use hydrogen for drum tracks and moving project from hydrogen to ardour many times. It’s possible to append good pattern-based drum machine into ardour?

  • wave editor. No integrated wave editor is big difficulty of ardour. I think about utility like audacity integrated into ardour. For fast editing regions or full tracks. Nobody like to edit wave in external program and import it after each change.

  • mastering utility on master track. Utility like Izotope Ozone will be amazing feature. Or at lesat utility like jamin (multiband compressor, EQ, parametric EQ’s, limiter, master reverb, mid/side signal processing).

:slight_smile:

Ardour can already use any external controller that sends regular MIDI CC or MIDI Machine Control messages. It can also integrate with external controllers that send OSC, such as iPhone running Murmur or TouchOSC. It can also integrate with external controllers that use the Mackie Control Protocol (MCP) as used in the Mackie/Logic Control and vastly cheaper Behringer BCF boxes. I have no idea what the ProjectMIX is generating.

No time to comment on most of your other ideas. They are all things that have been spoken about at length by ardour developers.

Small correction Paul. Ardour speaks the LOGIC control protocol, which is what the Mackie Control Protocol is based off of, and is very similar but not quite the same. No matter though as the Mackie surfaces also support the Logic Control Protocol as well. The Mackie Control Protocol is what I spoke to you about some a while back on IRC.

That being said, according to an article in Keyboard magazine I believe it is, the MAudio ProjectMix supports HUI, Mackie Control, Logic Control, MIDI, along with some others I think. So yes it should already be supported using both MIDI and the Logic Control Protocol, and heck even the Mackie Control Protocol might be usable on that but probably not the screen which is where some of the differences are IIRC.

   Seablade

irok-

- utility for correct intonation, pitch and other vocal properties (like celemony melodyne)
  • MIDI. I know, that this feature will be in ardour 3. But i have questions: do You think about some virtual instruments integrated into ardour? VST don’t works so good, so working on MIDI tracks with “native” instruments (synths, samplers, …) will be good idea. Good feature is assinging virtual instrument to MIDI track, instead of connectiong ardour MIDI track to external applications (integration into one application is one of most important things for me). One better option instead of instruments compiled into ardour is using DSSI format.

  • mastering utility on master track. Utility like Izotope Ozone will be amazing feature. Or at lesat utility like jamin (multiband compressor, EQ, parametric EQ’s, limiter, master reverb, mid/side signal processing).

All of these are answered by the same thing, plugins;)

LV2 for example I don’t thinkt here is anything stoping folks from implementing instrument plugins IIRC. Though to be honest I have some of the best luck with VSTi plugins when I used those on Linux some time back as well.

Plus there is a debate going on between myself and tohers about the concept of a mastering interface in a different thread in these forums;)

- drum machine. I like to work in one complex application. Nowdays I must use hydrogen for drum tracks and moving project from hydrogen to ardour many times. It's possible to append good pattern-based drum machine into ardour?
  • wave editor. No integrated wave editor is big difficulty of ardour. I think about utility like audacity integrated into ardour. For fast editing regions or full tracks. Nobody like to edit wave in external program and import it after each change.

Personally I am a fan of both of these being external to Ardour myself. But I am to tired to explain my logic right now other than to say, I view these as separate tools with their own functions and uses completely separate (Albiet they can be related) from Ardour’s uses.

   Seablade

I would really like to be able to use the iPhone as a basic control surface for Ardour, running on UBUNTU. I’m looking at either the AC-7 app, or the TouchOSC app. Both look good. I know Ardour supports both of the relevant protocols. But what I’m finding online often seems to refer to Ardour running on a MAC.
I can’t for the life of me find ways to make either of those apps work with Ardour on Linux.

Help please!

jksheehy: you can’t use either of them with Linux, at least not without significant work.

The AC-7 requires a particular program to run on the mac to translate what it sends (via wifi) into something that looks like the MIDI sent by a Mackie control surface. The TouchOSC stuff requires the same kind of translation - it is being done by using Max to do the translation. You can do this on Linux with PureData or SuperCollider or something home-brewed, but there are no off-the-shelf tools ready to do this for you on Linux.