this is my first message here, so: hello my name is Jehan, and I am using Ardour for a small animation.
Now with the question: let’s say I have a sound with footsteps in a stereo track. And I want to use them for a character which goes from the left to the right of the screen. So When he is on the left, I want more volume on the left channel, for instance.
Actually all I see about volume or gain in Ardour right now is the track volume. I can’t even see a sound by sound volume, even less how to set a volume for only a small selection in a sound. And I don’t see either the left/right volumes. Can we do this? Or do we have to edit our sounds in another software before importing in Ardour?
Also if we can do this, is it possible to do the thing progressively? What if I want the sound being stronger on left channel and progressively shift towards right? Basically is there a system of keyframes in ardour?
Yes I indeed installed from my distribution’s repository. I usually prefer to do so at first (even though it is often a slightly old version), unless there are some major feature/bug fix I need; or else if I want to patch the program (then I use the dev repository).
Anyway I found ways to do what I want to do. That’s ok for now, because I don’t have much time. But I actually already checked out the repository so that I can have an idea of what is ahead with Ardour 3.
And maybe — who knows? — I may even make some bug fix or some feature patch to propose (if I feel the need. Right now, Ardour is already quite good for the basic usage I have).
Thanks.
Actually I did try this, but it looked like it was not working. Trying again, I understood that you can manage 2 different “lines” in this pan track, but they look exactly the same (no different color or any visual effect to know which one is which, except when you create the line with the mouse).
Anyway I got all the information I was asking for in this thread, and even more! Thanks again.
Thanks for your answer.
Sorry for my vocabulary which is probably not the conventional in audio world, as I am just discovering it.
So yes, the sounds are stereo, even though they are simple sounds which could have been solo (effect sounds, footstep or creaking floor for instance, found on freesound.org; and some voice I recorded myself, then cleaned, using Audacity. Why stereo? No idea, I definitely don’t have a stereo mic, I guess my mistake at least for the ones I recorded).
Also I can see 2 sound graphs in the track. And in the mixer, I can indeed see 2 levels (one for each channel, left-right, I guess), but only a single general volume fader. Basically I get what is in these screenshots: http://ardour.org/files/manual/sn-mixer-window.html
So what if I wanted to change volume of a whole track differently for left to right channel?
Anyway automation seems indeed to be the answer for fine tuning! Thanks a lot, looks like what I was looking for. Without plugin, I can see 2 automation control: fading and pan. Looks like pan in particular was what I was looking for in this thread (though fading automation will definitely be handy too).
Well except for 1 thing. It looks like the pan automation affects only the right channel. It does not change the left channel. I can change these through the mixer (now that I understand what this is), but that’s for the whole track then, and I can’t have effect like panning changing over time. Maybe it’s a bug on pan automation, or something I missed on how to use it?
linuxdsp: you say A3 has better control. Is it Ardour 3? I have 2.8.12, and I can see on the website latest release is 2.8.16. I guess Ardour 3 is the development branch then (if that’s what you meant by A3)?
In any case, thanks both of you.
If you also know why the pan automation only affects the right channel, then you will have made my day!
@LeatusPenguin: I just re-read the original post, I thought it was a mono sound which needed to be panned left to right onto the stereo (master) buss - now I’m not sure if its a stereo track being panned onto the output. What I will say is that A3 has far superior pan controls especially for panning stereo tracks / channels.
