Hi Everyone. I’m new to Ardour/Linux. I’ve had some success figuring it out, but the problem that still escapes me is monitoring.
I’m using a Mackie Onyx BlackJack. Right now, the best monitoring situation I can do is record everything and send it through a “general” bus then turn the volume way down so I can hear the track I’m currently recording. When I’m recording a singer they ask for more vocals in the monitor, but the only way I can do that is turning everything else down. I’ve researched a lot, but can’t figure it out.
I’ve tried options->monitoring-> everything in there, but I still can configure it. Also, my blackjack has a knob titled “monitor” on it. When I was on Windows using Audition, that did the trick - no such luck in Linux.
you can turn down the master fader in ardour, the monitor on that interface sends audio from the inputs directly to the monitor out on the interface. i have the same problem with my soundcard when monitoring directly form the soundcard instead of using ardour for monitoring (which introduces a horrible latency)
another option is to open up alsa mixer and turn down the main output .
you can turn down the master fader in ardour, the monitor on that interface sends audio from the inputs directly to the monitor out on the interface. i have the same problem with my soundcard when monitoring directly form the soundcard instead of using ardour for monitoring (which introduces a horrible latency)
another option is to open up alsa mixer and turn down the main output .
Yeah, I’ve played with that, but have only gotten ‘tolerable’ results. For instance, I’m working with a harmonica player and he just can’t get enough volume through the monitoring headphones.
The best solution I’ve found it to crank his signal in Ardour and made a bus to run everything else through then lower that volume. It’s kind of a pain and I imagine that there is a better solution. Do you know anything about the monitoring bus? I’ve read a little bit about it, but I haven’t figured it out yet. When creating a session (I’m not sure if you can do it once the session is created) you can select an option to ‘create monitoring bus’. When I do that, it seems to be the same as the Master - although from what i’ve read it’s quite a bit different. Any idea?
Short version, this is why many studios use mix consoles while tracking. It is much easier to set up a headphone mix on a console than in software, though the concepts are the same.
And yes sometimes you have to turn everything else down to bring the volume of something else to the forefront by turning up the overall volume. Doesn’t matter what you are on, if you always keep just cranking the volume you will run out of headroom and get distortion.
@iambeam: assuming you’ve got output channels to spare for use as a monitor path way, this is really relatively simple.
Create a new bus for each person who wants/needs a monitor signal.
Send everything (or just some tracks) to each such bus.
Connect each such bus to the relevant output(s) so that the signal will go to the right person.
Now you’ve got individual send controls from every track to each “monitor” bus, individually. You can then bring up track X and take down tracks A, B and C for a particular monitor mix, and in a different one, bring up tracks B and C and take down tracks A and X.
This is all much easier to do in Ardour 3, so I hope you are using it.