Live

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

Hello everybody.

I’m very new in Ardour and I didn’t find any post on live mixing with it.
I mean on stage, Is it possible? Which hardware do I have to connect?

Thanks

#2

Is it possible? Yes absolutely.

Which hardware to connect… that all depends on what hardware you have and what you are trying to do.

 Seablade
#3

Thanks Seablade.

I would like to mix live a band/group during their performances. The audio devices/cards I saw have few input channels (max 6/8). For a live performances I think I need up to 20 channels (or more)

Francesco

#4

Hello, I can tell you that I used Ardour for a live performance, and I found it perfect. Rock-hard stability, low latency, lots of control over the stuff.
It was a different situation than yours (I used it to play some electronic music with a synthesizer and a little sound card plugged in the pc), but I am sure it can do great things with a wider set of intruments, too.

#5

If you use m-audio delta 1010 sound cards (or 1010LTs) you can sync their wordclocks together. Each card has 8 inputs and 8 outputs, so If you have 3 free PCI slots in your computer, you can use 3 of them to get 24 channels in and out.

To do this, you’ll need to setup .asoundrc as outlined here:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/.asoundrc

You’ll also have to select the wordclock in/out settings for the cards so that one is a master and the others are slaves (and connect the BNC connectors)

#6

Thanks,

I will try! Stay tuned.

#7

If you use multiple Delta 1010s (or any multiple cards for that matter) with ALSA you won’t be able to use very low latency. ALSA’s pcm_multi plugin causes scheduling problems that can only be overcome by using large buffers. The lowest period size I’ve ever been able to use with three 1010s is 256 at 48kHz, and even that produced the occasional xrun. As I only use them for recording and use hardware monitoring this isn’t a problem for me, but I don’t think I’d want to use it for live mixing.

If you want to try it anyway, I would suggest you don’t use the method described at http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/.asoundrc. That shows a .asoundrc using ttable, which works but completely screws up performance (even 1024 period size will be unusable due to xruns). Try the .asoundrc here:
http://www.jrigg.co.uk/linuxaudio/ice1712multi.html

A much better way is to use a single interface card with enough channels, like one of the supported RME cards along with external converters.