Right now I am using carla and jack and other programs to route and change audio and I was wondering how much of my setup can be condensed into using just reaper and if it would be practical to have it all in reaper my goal with my setup is control and portability so if someone just needs one configuration file to set it all up that would be perfect especially if it works on both windows and linux or can work with little modification.
So right now I have it setup on windows because windows requires the most software compared to linux so it should be easier on linux then windows the setup uses SAR, Asio4ALL, Jack, carla, another version of jack(Qjack), asioconfig to change asio4all and SAR.
So basically what out of my setup could I get rid of without losing funcionallity if I replaced it with reaper and the same thing could be done on linux(as close as possible)?
Well first and foremost I am not sure what any of this has to do with Ardour (Seeing as you are on the Ardour forums, not the reaper forums), so for the record, at the moment, this looks to be very off topic for these forums. Nothing against Reaper personally, but these forums are focused on Ardour instead, so I may still lock the thread at some point in the not to distant future.
Second, you havenât really said WHAT you are trying to accomplish. What exactly are you doing to the audio, or what âcontrolâ do you need? Are you trying to do a software live mixer, or something? What role is Carla playing, or what role do you expect a DAW to play instead?
Third, not sure why you are running both SAR and Jack given the software you mentioned, as Jack routes audio between applications that support Jack.
Fourth QJackCTL and Jack are not two versions of Jack. You have the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) and QJackCtl is used to control it and route audio between applications.
I know I am on the ardour forms cause this is the closest DAW to reaper that is opensource. I would rather use a open source DAW then non open source otherwise I will just keep going with my open source setup.
I want to be able to like change volume, add sound effects, clean up audio just be able to change more then you can by default. A example is being able to send a audio file from like foobar into micrphone so if you spoke ingame people could hear it. Another thing is controlling what a recording or livestream hears. Carla right now is how I save my Jack connections and it is how I name my inputs and outputs and I change audio in there with the built in plugins. I want a DAW to have my setup require less software because I believe a DAW can replace some of the software I use. So in turn it becomes more portable.
SAR is for mores inputs and outputs and naming them and because I donât have a asio sound card I have SAR use asio4all and in Carla is where everything happens aka changing volume of sound inputs customizing routeing etc.
On windows 10 to get Jack to reliably work I had to install too versions of Jack the reason I say two versions is cause both exes say Jack but just different numbers.
Uhh ⌠without you installing Ardour and trying it and pointing out what you canât figure out how to make work, itâs kinda difficult to help you because as Paul and Seablade said, weâre not a REAPER support forum, weâre here for Ardour.
It sounds like you should just be able to take the plugins youâre running in Carla, and run them inside the signal chain on a track in whatever DAW you end up with. OR just open Carla inside the DAW, and open your preset. I donât generally do this because itâs significantly more CPU intensive.
If youâre asking about migrating to Linux in general, Iâd recommend linuxmusicians.com as a resource - theyâre pretty awesome. Thereâs a specific Linux distro - AVLinux thatâs set up exclusively for pro audio and saves a lot of headache with the setup time. but having set up Ubunutu variants, Linux Mint, and now Manjaro, I can testify that if youâre patient and willing to google stuff, you can set up a linux pro audio box running any distro you want.
I do have ardour installed but what software from what I am currently using with jack will I not need to accomplish the same thing. cause if I still need jack then I might as well just keep using carla unless there is some benefit like performance or flexability or portability that I would gain from using ardour. Also this would be the first DAW I have ever used. with migrating I want to be able to have like 2 presets one made for windows which I already have a carla preset for exactly what I want and just changing very little for it to work on linux. So I would be willing to spend more time into ardour and figuring it out if someone could point out what software from the list of what I use I could get rid of if I used ardour and if it could improve portability. so I know if it is worth spending time learning ardour and in turn spending money to support it.
Are you recording? Playing live and using carla as a plugin host? What are you running within Carla?
If youâre using REAPER, youâre using a DAW
The Carla presets will migrate and you can run Carla as a plugin on a track in Ardour. Then when you open the carla plugin up, you just open your preset file and viola, migration done. In general I think you are overthinking it.
If i was in your shoes this is what I would do
download ardour for windows. Like it? Then âŚ
back up your HD
download AV linux and create a bootable USB drive with it
check your UEFI/bios settings to maje sure you can boot from USB and that the USB drive has boot priority. There is a way to bypass this in windows 10 and set it to boot from the USB on next boot but i have no idea how to do it.
boot to the AV linux image. Like what you see? Install it to the HD. You will lose all data on the HD when you do this so make sure you backed shit up.
boot up your new linux box and profit.
Most of the reason pro audio is done on Mac is that the OS uses a fraction of the amount of RAM and CPU that Windows does, giving more resources for processing audio. The same holds true for Linux as far as system resource usage, itâs just a bit more to get it set up right because linux has a different security model at the OS level where system resources are concerned.
With carla I am routing audio naming inputs and outputs and I have a section in between the output and input that is for controlling volume and routing the audio to the right output.
I am not using reaper I dont have that much money to spend on audio.
If I run carla as a plugin then am I really even gaining anything.
I still would like to know what software I could get rid of if I used a DAW instead of my current setup which is SAR, Asio4ALL, Jack, carla, another version of jack, asioconfig to change asio4all and SAR.
I suspect you could get rid of everything on that list if you moved to Ardour (as others before me have said). However, there are various questions that others have asked which you havenât fully answered so itâs a bit like trying to answer the question of how much fuel to use for a journey of as-yet undetermined distance.
Maybe give us one detailed typical workflow and then perhaps weâd be in a better situation to offer advice as it pertains to Ardour.
So first of all I run all application with admin privaleges cause of windows not liking certain applications if run normally. I first run asioconfig to make sure it all is setup properly aka asioe4all and SAR then I run Jack port audio with these perimeters âC:\Program Files (x86)\Jack\jackd.exeâ -R -S -d portaudio -d âASIO::Synchronous Audio Routerâ then Qjackctl then Carla and in Carla I import my preset then I go to the patchpay and move it all so it looks like then I go to the rack and adjust the volume as needed when like playing sound like a soundboard.
The attached photo is my setup when I dont want my soundboard aka any audio from like youtube or whatever to go to my microphone oterwise I would just connect it to my mic out.
This is my most up to date setup image which is what I use right now all the time and the rack bay is simple enough that I dont need to show a photo of it cause all I do is turn the ones on the image on and off so no audio can go through it when I dont want audio to go through it and I control volume I would like though with ardour to be able to set a volume limit cause right now just changing the volume is annoying.
OK, but what are you actually trying to accomplish? Itâs still not very clear. It sounds like JACK might need to remain in your setup but otherwise you could rid yourself of the rest. Hard to tell from your descriptions though. Please give us an exact real world example such as âI want to dry record two singers to a WAV file while simultaneously pushing the audio through a plate reverb to a YouTube livestreamâ. Itâs just a random example but you see what Iâm looking forâŚ
A example is send all audio from browser and foobar and other software that plays audio into the soundboard plugin to control volume then combine it all and send it to micrphone and speakers and audacity to record the audio. Basically just audio routing and controling stuff like volume and where that audio goes. That is all my setup is meant to do route and label audio. And have audio seperate from each other untill I need to it to combined.
I do record but it is complex right now I send audio I want to record to audacity and if recording a video and I dont want them to hear discord I just dont send that audio to obs. Basically in the perfect world there would just be one software for audio routing labeling and controlling stuff like volume in one program. Right now Jack is my backend basically for routing audio then I use carla for labeling and connecting the audio aka routing it and controlling the volume for each sperate audio channel thingy. and I use SAR to also label and add more inputs and output.
You could then easily route the audio into Audacity or Ardour to record or simply capture within Voicemeeter. IMHO, Ardour does seem overkill for this kind of workflow but it can be done relatively easily on Linux using a combination of Ardour, JACK and the JACK pulseaudio bridge. It just feels a bit like using a hammer to crack a nut.
I suppose it also somewhat depends on whether you want to go through the hassle of installing a new OS.
The thing is I need a program that will work on both linux and windows cause I am using this setup on both but I need to set it up first on windows and voicemeeter is not on linux so then I would need completly different setups for both operating systems. Also I have two computers soo one is linux and one is windows.
Because of how simple just routing audio and changing volume and that kind of stuff is. If I use ardour do I even need jack or can ardour do the same routing audio as jack?
Also can ardour replace SAR the thing I do with SAR is to have more inputs and outputs like a specific one for each major program.
The biggest reason I want to use ardour is to simplify my setup into one program or very few programs. And reliability cause then I would be relieing on one program so I dont have to worry about another one updating and breaking the setup.
I suspect youâd need JACK (or equivalent) on both systems as you are routing audio from browsers etc into Ardour. On Linux it would require the use of the JACK pulseaudio bridge to connect everything (Firefox relies on pulseaudio).
So Jack and ardour for audio routing and changing the audio. But what about SAR which for me makes virtual audio endpoints that are either playback or recording. Is ardour able to make endpoints?
Edit: If ardour is able to make endpoints then I should only need Jack and ardour.
If ardour is not able to make virtual endpoints is there software on linux or some way to do it on linux?
