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 haven’t fully answered so it’s 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 we’d 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 “C:\Program Files (x86)\Jack\jackd.exe” -R -S -d portaudio -d “ASIO::Synchronous Audio Router” 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? It’s 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 “I want to dry record two singers to a WAV file while simultaneously pushing the audio through a plate reverb to a YouTube livestream”. It’s just a random example but you see what I’m looking for…
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 you’d 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?
JACK should cover all your needs. I’ve never needed a SAR or voicemeeter equivalent on Linux. The default bridge setup is a stereo mixdown from pulseaudio into the JACK ecosystem. You would need to mess around with multiple sinks as part of the pulseaudio jack bridge if you wanted to manipulate or record each application to a separate track: https://askubuntu.com/questions/680817/jack-and-pulseaudio-multiple-sinks
On Windows, it seems that SAR or Voicemeeter are kinda the equivalents of the Linux pulseaudio bridge. I should also point out that if you want to stick to a stereo mixdown approach, you can always use the pulseaudio mixer as a way to balance your various applications before they reach JACK.
That sounds about right other than, as I mentioned, you can leave out the multiple sinks if you use the pulseaudio mixer to balance everything to your satisfaction. I guess it depends on whether you need to do adjustments to each individual application’s audio after the fact.
I will have too look more into that when I do the linux version first I am setting up windows cause I already have all the application and stuff on here and most setup except ardour.
When I get a working product I might record a video showing the entire process of it being done on my second machine on clean windows install and then doing it on linux and posting about it on my website.
If I do do that I will provide a link. If anyone would want it.
I checked out ardour I already got it too work and it is actually much better then I was expecting cause it automatically labels the inputs and outputs. I actually found out on windows I dont even need jack anymore I only need asio4all cause I dont have a asio card unless I missed it will check later on that and ardour and SAR.
Edit: I was gonna respond ealier but apparently there is a daily limit for new users so I could not.
