Problems routing sound to MBP's internal soundcard

Installation & Configuration Mac OS X
#1

I’m new to Ardour and have some problems routing the audio.

In the “Audio Setup” tab in the “Session Control” window (the first window that appears after starting Ardour) I can only select ‘Soundflower’ as an interface for some strange reason. I selected “CoreAudio” as the driver and the only choices I get for the interface are “Soundflower (2ch)” and “Soundflower (16ch)”.

Is there a way to route audio to my internal soundcard directly instead of going trough “Soundflower”?

I’ve looked at Jack’s routing but nothing there seems to be going to Soundflower.

(I’m on OSX 10.6.6, MBP (late 2010), Ardour 2.8.11)

#2

In downloading Ardour, on one of the pages, you were likely instructed to read here…

http://ardour.org/first_time_osx_native

On that page you will find instructions for creating an aggregate device;) The entire page is considered mandatory reading for OS X users however.

You can find more detailed instructions here…
http://en.flossmanuals.net/Ardour/StartUtilityAudioMidiSetupOSX

And I recommend reading that second link entirely(As in the entire manual) as well.

  Seablade
#3

Seablade’s answer is better so I removed mine,
can’t seem to delete this

#4

Thank you very much. Problem solved. I must have overlooked the part.

I’m wondering though why this is no issue with other sequencers. Must be related to the use of Jack but why is a mystery to me.

#5

Simple reason, long explanation.

In professional audio, when you have multiple devices they tend to get an occurrence known as clock drift. As a result Jack was designed from the ground up to use a single device, to ensure this is not an issue. However when Apple switched to Intel they decided to take their full duplex(Can play and record audio at the same time) device and split it into two (Well really three) separate half-duplex devices(One that plays audio, one that records). Many programs will just accept two separate devices and not worry about clock drift, Jack will not. Thus the need to create an aggregate device.

    Seablade
#6

In addition, the latest version of JACK will do this automatically for you, without any setup needed. However, if you start Ardour/Mixbus first, without starting JACK, Ardour/Mixbus looks only for duplex (simultaneous playback & record) devices, rather than “every device”, and so the result can be misleading. If you use JackPilot, which comes with JackOSX, the right thing now happens without any work on your part - it will build an aggregate device out of whichever input+output devices you choose.