How to change multiple tracks outputs at once?

Hi, I’m new in Ardour… how can I select multiple tracks and change all of them outputs? for exemple: I want to route all drums tracks to a bus. can I do this all at once? also, to create sends to a aux bus in multiple track at once… can I do it?

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You can’t do this by just operating on a set of arbitrary selected tracks.

However, you can put them in a group and then create a subgroup bus.

You can also open the Window > Audio Connections (Alt-p on Linux) to get an extremely flexible and fast interface for setting up I/O connections.

Out of curiosity how complex would it be to develop such a feature? SHIFT select and hold for applying the same routing action to multiple tracks. I know it’s not even seen as necessary for starters, but I would like to understand if what we are asking is actually an endeavouring task or just a bone that won’t be thrown for a matter of software vision principles.
:cowboy_hat_face:

It’s not particularly hard but it also isn’t particularly useful.

Most of the time, you’re doing one of two things:

  1. using an aux send to route to a bus.
  2. using a sub-group bus to handle all outputs from a group

For (1), wiring up the track outputs isn’t a part of the process at all. The signal flows via aux-sends.

For (2), it’s faster to select the tracks, then right click in the group bar, make a new group from the selection, then right click again and select “Add Subgroup Bus”, which both creates the bus, and reconnects all the outputs of the group to it.

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It is a matter of workflows and it is very cool that Ardour usually allows for a variety of them. For case 1 you may as well want to make a couple of sends at once to the same fx bus, shift hold + select could be handy. For case 2 if you are already using a bus to which you want to route a group of outputs you don’t really have it that easy, manually picking one by one or using the routing grid, which is nice to operate but you still have to click for each disconnection and connection for each track. I’d say selecting tracks and then selecting once the output (which automatically cancels previous connection) appears more efficient in my mind.

If it is not that hard to implement it would be cool to have it someday, there’s a little bunch of us who could find it very useful.

+1

I also struggle with this regularly…

sorry, but I think this is really useful. you lose a lot of time connecting independently. I know some other DAWs that have useful features as: holding ctrl on the selected track and changing the i/o it will automatic connect them all at once on the desire output channel (bus or aux) in the right order (1, 2, 3 for exemple).
I will try the Audio Connections window. For me the routing is a critical part of my workflow as a sound design I do a lot of parallel processing and I use a lot of different busses and aux to create a complex flow of audio signal.
Thanks for all the answers. I think the hardest part is to get use to the new (for me) workflow of Ardour… but is a normal process. thanks!

Another thing related to it is… if I want to creat a parallel bus for all the mix (andrew sheps style), I have to create the fader to the buss independently in each channel? I have a mix with 40 tracks, I have to create each one independently? or there is some way to create the fader to the buss all at once in the channels?

So while it may not work for all cases here, I will remind folks of the routing grid which can make short work of routing multiple things to a destination. Again it won’t work for everything (Say you actually need a level controlled send) but it will work for routing many tracks quickly.

This also could be implemented via Lua most likely.

   Seablade

I’d +1 the wish, for making the same actions (like changing outputs) for marked tracks at once. Maybe with pressed shift key or different modifier. It would be great to have this behaviour for Mute/Solo/Rec Arm as well.

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There’s one exception: Creating Group Submix Buses doesn’t work for MIDI Tracks.

Often I want to send a bunch of MIDI Tracks with synthesizers into a Submix Bus, but I have to do it manually.

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