Realtime export for users of outboard equipment

Hi there,

after quite some experimenting with plugins, I recently went back to using outboard reverbs by TC.

One easy way of integrating such a reverb is to plug into the SPDIF I/Os of your soundcard, sending audio to it via a bus in ardour, and routing the returns into another bus in ardour.

However, to export a track, this requires to play it back and record Ardour’s main out with jack_rec.

How about an realtime option in the export dialog? Basically the same thing: play back and record from main out.

If my budget were unlimited, I’d go for the real expensive TC reverbs instead of the quite good M-One XL (and I’d donate more to Ardour, of course.) Furthermore, I would switch to a TC Finalizer as a mastering processor in the main inserts. These external devices can even be easily stacked over one single ADAT connection (each device picking its two channels from the ADAT stream).

So I think even for very professional usage scenarios, there would be good reasons to have such an option.

Best
DrNI

You can also easily rec back into Ardour in realtime should you choose to. Just route the Master Outs into a separate track as well and remove that track from the Master to avoid a feedback loop.

     Seablade

Well, that I know, but then I’d have to mute everything but that track and then export. This isn’t exactly straightforward and not more convenient than calling jack_rec. Well, the difference of course being that the length of the recording and therefore the positions in CUE/TOC exports would be still valid.

Uh no, you mute that track only(if you keep it routed, it you remove the routing you don’t even need that). Everything else you would want unmuted so that it plays back and records on that track.

    Seablade

OK, I missed one piece of information: The export dialog allows you to select a different channel than main out. This makes the workaround quite a bit more straightforward. Now the “realtime export” is just one step of recording a track away. Thanks for your assistance.

If you don’t want to apply any further processing you could also export the region directly from it’s context menu. This way it doesn’t go through the mixer at all and would only apply region fades and region gain.

And in case you want to apply some mastering, instead of muting everything else you could solo the given track.