I’m sure it’s just a setting somewhere that I’m missing.
I have a stereo track that I want to record, so I arm that one track and then record and play. I want a single stereo wav file, but I end up with two mono wav files with %L and %R appended to the filenames. I can fix it with Audacity, but I’d rather have it that way to start with. How do I do that?
You go to Session > Export.
Ardour is a DAW, not a soundfile editor. Internally it always records to mono audio files. The files inside of Ardour, while completely accessible, are intended for use by Ardour. If you want something to “take away”, you export it.
If you literally just want to record a stereo file and be done with it, Audacity is a more appropriate tool.
I guess I should have included more detail:
I want to click record, do the gig, click stop, and have a finished file all ready to go. I’d imagine that each track would go to its own file, with a channel count within that file that corresponds to the channel count of that track. But that’s not how it works?
The Master is presently unused, partly because I couldn’t pick just one output among equals to be the “master”, and partly to keep the Monitor silent except for PFL.
I could unroute the Master from the Monitor to keep the silence, and then use the Master instead of that last channel strip. Would that allow me to record stereo to a single file, live as it happens?
Ardour (like a number of other DAWs), does not do that.
Session > Export is how you get access to files in the format that you want for use outside the DAW.
Alright. Thanks.
That’s just to render a studio session, right? Multitrack recording, processed later, and then save that processing to a stereo file, faster than real-time? Or does it do live too?
This is on Ubuntu Studio with Pipewire, so I guess I could have Audacity grab that signal and record it that way…
No, export includes region export and stem export, which are not (necessarily) session wide. Faster than real time and live, your choice.
If I understand what the OP is asking, I don’t think “live” in the sense that you can export simultaneously with recording, right? You have to export after finishing recording.
I interpreted the question as being “real-time” vs “faster-than-realtime”
That is what I assumed you meant, which is why I wanted to clarify for the benefit of the op.
The original request was phrased as:
So not live in the sense of being ready to go as soon as the stop button is clicked.
This is entirely live, so producing a final recording as it happens, and then ideally having that file immediately when the session is over.
It can’t be faster than realtime because that data doesn’t exist yet. I only mentioned it to ask about the actual function of the Export button before I beat my head against another wall, and because I happen to know that exporting a pre-recorded studio session can be faster than realtime. Unlike a tape machine and analog processing, DSP really cares nothing about universe time, only samples, so if everything is set and ready to go, it can all be done in an instant if you somehow have the compute for it. But that’s not what I’m doing here.
For what you are looking for, your best bet is to route the master out to a standalone recorder most likely. A cheap standalone recorder would work well for this, or depending on your computer or setup you could do it with another piece of software if you are capable of routing Ardour’s audio out to other software.
you could do it with another piece of software if you are capable of routing Ardour’s audio out to other software.
One such software would be:
Thanks. Looks like that’s my solution. Like I said above, this is on Ubuntu Studio with Pipewire, and Ardour is using the JACK backend here, so I already have a bunch of connections available. Just hook one more from the output of that channel strip to Audacity, which also comes preinstalled with UStudio alongside Ardour and ton of other toys, and I think I’m set.
Though it would have been nice to have it all in one app. Oh well, I guess.
Isn’t it more straightforward to simply right click your stereo region after recording and hit “[region name] > Export” ? Less is more, right ?
No, you would need to export it first. This may take a few minutes or more depending on the length of the gig and the power of your computer.
I would suggest that, instead of recording only the mixed track, you consider recording all of the individual tracks and having the Master bus as the final mixed version. The workflow between what you are currently doing and this approach would be nearly identical (you would need to arm all of the tracks, but you can do this by using the record view and using ctrl-r) and, at the end, do the export.
The advantage of this approach is that you end up with all of the tracks separate so you have the opportunity to remix them or use the individual tracks for other projects in the future if you want.
Cheers,
Keith
THAT, might actually be the best explanation I’ve seen so far of how it’s supposed to work. Thank you!
I come from the analog world, where you do just plug a recorder into whatever signal(s) you want to capture and start it running, and that’s all there is to it. If you manage it well, it can actually be the final product directly. This is the first time someone’s mentioned that there’s an additional layer here that is (almost) required.
There’s the internal recording, which is what I’ve had so far, and then I go deep into the project file structure to get it. And then there’s a whole second layer that is copied from that, as the intended connection to the outside world. Thus, the final version requires an extra step to copy from the internal version, which itself of course can’t be finished until the actual recording stops.
This allows more flexibility, at the expense of more steps and more abstraction.
That’s all very nice, but your analog recorder doesn’t do unlimited numbers of tracks, non-linear, non-destructive editing or plugins 
Regions, as @jean-emmanuel mentioned, are a different level of object than tracks, which is why I hadn’t brought up region export yet. However, if your workflow always just involves a single region per track (not unlikely for live recording, though not guaranteed either), then thinking about this as a problem of “how do i get a stereo audio file for this region” does make sense.
That’s all nice too, but I kinda agree with this guy, who says it actually hurts the process and the result in ways that are not normally front-and-center:
And for the plugins part, an analog rig has a console EQ and whatever gear you want to put in the insert loops, so that’s that difference gone…at least theoretically. Sure, analog processing is expensive, not “transparent”, and not “instant” in the sense of re-running a multitrack recording through it and getting a mixdown right away, but I can run a multitrack recording through it in real time and record the result in real time. Yes, it adds more non-idealities like the video mentions towards the beginning, but it keeps the “organity” (if that’s a word), which I’ve seen several questions about how to add back into a digital rig. Basically, human inconsistencies because a human operator or musician is directly doing things - slightly off-time, or fat-fingered, or missed a cue entirely, or whatever - and that’s getting captured too.
Analog is not exactly compact either, which is a huge selling point for digital. The rig that I’m talking about in this thread does need to be compact, and so I want the ease of operation of a capable analog rig that is already set up and stays that way, with the compactness of digital. All the processing stays there and connected (Ardour’s session file), the record and stop buttons are <here> (points to them), along with all the other controls you need, always available all at the same time and “just work”, and you can just yoink the result and go with no further thought.
Towards that end, this digital rig on a TV cart is set up by a script, not manually, so that it always comes up the exact same way, and shut down by a script too, so the parts that see changes, adapt to them, and then save the adaptations instead of what it’s supposed to be, don’t see those changes. Try to setup and shutdown the rig manually, and you WILL get things out of order and then wonder what it’s doing next time when a bad adaptation makes it not work right.
Control is actually through a different app that is focused on video and does a lot there (cameras, etc.), and sends OSC messages to Ardour, which is not normally visible. It’s supposed to record itself, and would actually be exactly what I want - soundtrack inside a video file, “live to tape” and finished immediately when I click stop - but it’s not exactly known for its audio processing. Thus, audio in a DAW, that pipes the final soundtrack into the video tool to pass through unchanged, among lots of other destinations at the same time with different mixes. A bit like auxiliary busses, but without the strict definition of “master + auxes” and the pre-/post-fade “tacked-on” architecture that it implies.
Instead, all of my inputs are equal and all of my outputs are equal, and I have a “pegboard” of sorts in my documentation for which gets what when. The actual implementation of that pegboard is a set of gates that side-chain to a 20kHz sinewave generator, and the individual feed level of that 20kHz control signal to each gate is controlled by the OSC messages. So then a one-shot instant-change message results in a nice fade, determined by the gate’s attack and release times.
If the video tool would work like it’s supposed to, then I wouldn’t have to record at all from Ardour. Just pipe it into the video tool to pass through unchanged as the video’s soundtrack. But because I’m having some problems with it, I want an independent audio recording of the same thing, as hassle-free as possible, and audio-swap in a video editor…while I continue to debug the “correct” workflow.
There are digital tools that do precisely what an old analog recorder did. None of them are “full scale DAWs”.
For what it’s worth, I’ve already seen that video, and I agree (mostly) with the view it espouses. There are compositional workflows where it is less relevant, but that doesn’t negate the point.
