Intro and request for feedback

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

Howdy everyone!

I’m somewhat new to the Ardour scene, but not new to multitrack recording on the computer. My previous experience was with a windows based PC. We were recording 16 channels live. Basically, we were going XLR into a 16 channel analog mixer with a snake out of the mixer into two 8 channel adats that were sync’d up and then SPDIF into I believe it was a Sonorus sound card. We were doing that about 7 or 8 years ago and we were barely able to do 16 tracks live at once, but we could, mainly due to the speed of the PC.

Now I have a horse of box running Ubuntu and have been enamored with Ardour. However, I sold all of my sound cards and adats and stuff a while back, so I’m starting from scratch again.

My thought was go with maybe an Edirol M-16DX digital mixer, and just bring it into my Ubunto box via SPDIF. I really like having the pre-mix for a live setting so that you can get everything really close before bringing it in, thus eliminating a lot of post mix time. My main concern is finding a sound card or two as the case may be, that would be compatible with Ubuntu/Ardour/Jack etc.

I’ve yet to purchase the mixer or sound cards because I wanted to see if anyone here was running a similar system with success and could recommend known performers that are compatible.

Thanks for any suggestions, input, criticism or just plain old b.s.

T

#2

Hi t-bone

Hmmm, I think you have many choices in Linux, more all the time. Lots of people like the RME stuff… expensive but studio quality. Ice 1712 chip based cards like the M-Audio Delta 1010LT are well supported in Linux and have a stereo spdif in, however running 2 together requires a special script for JACK and also requires setting them up as clock master and slave for proper synchronization. the Freebob firewire list of supported interfaces is also getting longer all the time, you just have to be certain your version of JACK is built with Freebob enabled, Presonus and Edirol products seem to be fairly well supported, I don’t use them so I can’t be too detailed.

Personally I use a single M-Audio 1010LT it works flawlessly and has a decent Mixer GUI in Linux. If you hunt around here a bit there are a few threads discussing hardware with more info, also Google “Freebob” and you will get a better idea of where firewire is at.

Best of luck, Ardour is a top notch sequencer getting better all the time.

#3

GMaq

Hey, thanks so much for the reply. That’s good info. I will look into the options you listed there and spend some time on the Freebob sight. Sounds like I’m headed in the right direction, and that’s good to know.

Much appreciated!

T