Trouble monitoring input to Ardour...

Getting Stuff Done How do I .... ?
#1

This seems to be an Ardour issue:

I have input going into A/D converter card (m-audio 24/96 PCI, i.e., guitar and vocals).
I have input coming from Hydrogen.

I can sometimes see the input signal in vu meters for each input track,
and sometimes I can see it in the master track (for instance when recording sometimes).

I know the signal is there, because I can patch it directly to System Outputs anytime.
I know its there at the track inputs even when the vu meters don’t show it, because I can use Meterbridge to look at the signal.

I have used basic mixing boards for some 30 years, from Soundcraft to Neve consoles, and even a few digital mixers.
Nonetheless, the Ardour interface is totally bewildering, when I can’t get expected results.

I have made connectons from each track output to the master inputs.
Yet there is no button or combination of same to make the master vu meter light up and monitor sound,
nor can I get the sound to play through into the System Output (my external monitor amp and speakers).
I know the monitors are working, again because I can patch directly to them from System inputs or Hydrogen and hear drums or guitar.

I press “solo” but don’t get solo tracks. I turn up all the faders and can’t get squat into the master track.
From the symptoms this has to be some misunderstanding or user error,
but all the menus are like Egyptian hieroglyphs.
I can’t even manage to turn a metronome on/off, or rather off, or even adjust its volume.
Everytime I do something that would seem reasonable, bam! something unexpected and ridiculous happens.
Clicking somewhere on the menu of buttons along the top (transport buttons),
made the whole bar vanish like Firefox toolbar, only there is no option in the “View” menu to turn it back on again.
Later I found it on another screen: it had detached itself completely from the window and put itself somewhere invisible. WHY?

I press the rewind button, but the red vertical line refuses to return to the beginning of the recording (presumabley 00.00).
Nothing works like a tape recorder should.

For a while I couldn’t even get Ardour to start up, because I couldn’t load an already started project.
What a frustratingly long session of pain.

I’m sure some of these problems would vanish with somebody over my shoulder
just going “Hey press xxx on menu yyy to do that.”

Of course, this interface is damn near impenetrable,
even for a sound engineer with 30 years of messing around.
How can that be?

I think I’ve provided enough info. I’d post pics or links,
but this primitive message poster window doesn’t even seem to have support tags,
unless I pull out a book on html coding.

come on guys, throw Dr. Evil a bone here.

#2

I’m going to “fess up” and say that although I have been using Linux since 2004, I had no idea about the middle button copy’n’paste action until tonight (blush). Thanks Paul!

Paul H

#3

same to me, i start loving the middle button :slight_smile:

#4

@nazaroo2: first handy hint: Options -> Monitoring -> Ardour does monitoring

second handy hint: Ardour2 does not record, playback or provide editing for MIDI. That is the big new feature in Ardour3, currently unreleased. Ardour2 can be controlled by various types of MIDI, and can function as an MTC (MIDI Time Code - not MIDI Clock) slave or master.

#5

ok.

Back after going back to square one:

(1) Downloaded and installed latest (non-beta?) version of Ardour, and installed it on Ubuntu 11.10.

First impressions: Not crashing, or sending things out into space (as much)…, also, the grab and copy track parts seems to work properly now. I don’t know what version is in the Ubuntu distro, and I doubt they will be really onto that…

But back to a basic problem: maybe its me, maybe its software bug, but :

(1) I can’t seem to get master track to show meter movement, unless I’m actually recording a track.

(2) I can play back a recorded track ok, but cannot hear it while recording.

This is very odd. Usually on boards I’ve used, you can always ‘solo’ anything, and actually hear it in the master track.
Also, the default is always: Hear every track in which there is recorded material, except the track I’m recording on.

So, either there is something fundamentally wrong with my recording approach,
or there is some switch or function somewhere that is not set right or not working.
I’m at a loss, because formerly (although I don’t know why), this glitch went away,
when I played with the ‘insert points’ on the master track.

What I’d like to do (to be clear), is record on one track, and be playing back the others,
all mixed into the master track using their own volume sliders, to achieve a stereo mix.

I’ve tried to keep things simple, by having all stereo tracks.

Thus the guitar is already mixed down into a stereo image before it goes to the (2 input) A/D converter.

Problem Two: which seems like it really belongs in this section (How do I…?):

I have a MIDI keyboard, which I am recording the output from through my mixer to the A/D converter (m-audio card).

The sound goes through and records onto a track no problem (but I can’t hear it in the Master Volume track until I play it back.
The problem with this is, that as noted above, I can’t hear the track being recorded while I record it.
I suppose I could monitor the new track by taking a send from the keyboard or external mixer (there is no amplifier).
But this seems all wrong. I should be able to hear what is being recorded on the track in the Ardour board.

Now since this keyboard is MIDI, I want to record the MIDI data too.
It seems like a ‘no brainer’ that there should also be “MIDI” recording tracks in Ardour.
Why not?
Or have I got something fundamentally wrong again?
My idea is to record the MIDI out of the keyboard alongside the audio,
so that I can use it to trigger drums or sync them, or to play a variety of ‘software synths’ and record them on other tracks,
from the same performance (MIDI keyboard keypresses and velocity info).

Obvioiusly Ardour is meant to both receive MIDI or other timing info, and transmit it to other software for syncing, such as the Hydrogen drum machine, or to automatically play an external synth.

So why can’t I record the MIDI output from the keyboard at the same time as I record the audio output?

I can see the MIDI ports in Patchage, so I know they are there. But I can’t hook them up to the Ardour mixer.

What am I doing wrong here?

Sorry about the haitus: I was busy building some tube-based guitar pedals, and had to put aside Ardour for a week.

#6

First and foremost, these post take a filtered subset of HTML for formatting. The amount of learning needed to learn them is pretty well identical to the amount of time I spent learning BBCode originally. Second, have you read the FLOSS Manual? Go to Help>Manual to do so. Or third have you asked on IRC when you have had a problem? Again in the Help menu, see the Chat item. Since that is out of the way…



There isn’t much that can be said from your post. It is clearly obvious something basic is going wrong, but you are throwing out so much that it is useless trying to guess what. Why don’t we focus on one problem at a time instead and figure out what is going on with that problem.



The interface in A2 is not the most conceptually pleasing way to set up things, but there are methods to every madness out there. That being said significant reworkings of some things in Ardour has been done for A3 so that it is closer to what you would expect on a larger format recording console for the most part. Closer, not completely there, but MUCH closer.



Now to break it down into individual problems/issues that are possibly explained enough to help…

I can sometimes see the input signal in vu meters for each input track, and sometimes I can see it in the master track (for instance when recording sometimes).

I know the signal is there, because I can patch it directly to System Outputs anytime.
I know its there at the track inputs even when the vu meters don’t show it, because I can use Meterbridge to look at the signal.


Most likely cause? You have the metering point set incorrectly for whatever you are trying to do.

http://en.flossmanuals.net/ardour/ch037_using-the-mixer-strip/

See on that linked page about halfway down where it talks about setting the metering point and the possible options.

I have made connectons from each track output to the master inputs. Yet there is no button or combination of same to make the master vu meter light up and monitor sound, nor can I get the sound to play through into the System Output (my external monitor amp and speakers). I know the monitors are working, again because I can patch directly to them from System inputs or Hydrogen and hear drums or guitar.

Very difficult to tell considering the lack of information on what specifically you are trying to do, are you trying to monitor incoming signal for instance, or monitor signal already recorded onto tracks you are playing back?

However I will assume the former for the moment and direct you to this page in the FLOSS Manual I mentioned...

http://en.flossmanuals.net/ardour/ch023_recording-audio/

Specifically the section on arming the track. What they do not explain there is HOW to tell Ardour otherwise, or to return to the state of Ardour handling Monitoring, which is located in the Options Menu under Monitoring. In this case you want to ensure that Ardour Does Monitoring is the enabled option. Ardour was designed with professional audio interfaces in mind, where in most cases for monitoring incoming signal you would use the mixing capabilities of that interface, not Ardour itself, however you can have Ardour handle monitoring should you choose by ensuring that the above option is checked and following the steps in the above link to arm a track so that the input is monitored.

I can't even manage to turn a metronome on/off, or rather off, or even adjust its volume.

There is a big button on the top right of the transport clocks labeled 'click'. This turns the metronome on and off. Not sure how much more simple this could be.

Clicking somewhere on the menu of buttons along the top (transport buttons), made the whole bar vanish like Firefox toolbar, only there is no option in the "View" menu to turn it back on again. Later I found it on another screen: it had detached itself completely from the window and put itself somewhere invisible. WHY?

These are detachable toolbars. This is an intentional choice and a fairly common one amongst many sorts of programs, audio or not. As for where it went, that is something you should check with your window manager, as in every install I have dealt with by default it comes up on the same screen literally in the same area as the Ardour editor from which it came. The only times it wasn't completely obvious what happened to it was on Linux when the window manager I was using put it below the editor window instead of above, this comes down to Window Manager behavior, not Ardour. Of course you don't really say what OS you are on, but I assume Linux for the time being.

I press the rewind button, but the red vertical line refuses to return to the beginning of the recording (presumabley 00.00). Nothing works like a tape recorder should.

Well it sounds like one of many things here. First, the intended behavior, is that by default it will return to the location of the START marker, which by default is at 00:00:00.00 However if you have moved it it should go to whereever the START marker is. The most common reason why this may not happen is if you have Ardour chasing an external timecode, where Ardour is not the TC Master. In this case Ardour should not and does not change position unless told to by the TC master. The area highlighted '6' in this image will show you were to adjust this setting...

http://ardour.org/files/reference/dsy22-ARDOUR.html#dsy143-ARDOUR

By default the TC is set to INTERNAL which is what most users want. However if you are using a program such as Hydrogen, assuming it can lock to Jack TC, which I believe it can, you may have set it to Jack which will likely cause the behavior you have mentioned. By the way that link is a link to the Reference Manual, which while still technically a WIP is also located in the Help menu under Reference if you ever want to get back to it.

I press "solo" but don't get solo tracks.

Not nearly enough information here to even begin to start assessing what may be wrong. You press solo where? On a track, a bus, the SOLO indicator(Which is actually a RUDE SOLO indicator and behaves like you would expect on a console) to the right of the transport clock? and what happens vs what do you expect happens?

I turn up all the faders and can't get squat into the master track. From the symptoms this has to be some misunderstanding or user error, but all the menus are like Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Ok you turn up all the faders, is transport running? Are you listening to material already existing on tracks? Or are you trying to monitor incoming material? Again details are needed in order to help you.

For a while I couldn't even get Ardour to start up, because I couldn't load an already started project. What a frustratingly long session of pain.

Tells us nothing and may not have had anything to do with Ardour for all we know at this time. A console log at the minimum is necessary to troubleshoot this. The most common reasons this happens have little to do with Ardour other than they stop Ardour from opening.(Example something elseis using your audio card and Ardour can't open the device, or you have a plugin that scanning it crashes Ardour, or you have a corrupted file in one of the many libraries Ardour uses).

I'm sure some of these problems would vanish with somebody over my shoulder just going "Hey press xxx on menu yyy to do that."

You bet it would. Of course so do all the problems my students have with ProTools or other DAWs when I stand over their shoulder and point out how to use them.

Now all of this post aside. It is best to ask most of this on IRC as I mentioned above. Especially during the Daytime EST it tends to be fairly active, and if you ask your question and just keep the window open, as people can they will answer, sometimes this can take minutes, sometimes hours, depending on who is around(Which in general depends on the time of day). It wouldn't be difficult to walk you through most of your problems on IRC for the most part.

Learning ANY DAW is a chore. This holds true no matter what DAW you are dealing with, and as someone that has to teach my students how to use them I can attest to this. Some of them come in with experience in say Sonar, but can't touch PT without basic guidance on how it works. An effort has been made to make the interface intuitive to those that have worked professionally in audio, specifically recording, but there is obviously room for improvement. That being said I personally don't believe it is anywhere near as bad as you imply, speaking as someone with more than a few years working professionally as an engineer myself(Not quite 30 though). The menu items themselves I think are fairly self explanatory for the most part, their order however is not always great IMO for example. And maybe that is what you were actually referring to with the hieroglyphics comment, not sure.

Seablade
#7

Hi again, and thanks for all the clues as to what might be behind the difficulties.

Here’s my update:

686 Version may be buggy

I had actually installed the 686 version (4 gig, dual core), and forgotten about it.
When pondering whether I should try to reinstall Ardour, I noticed this in the Ubuntu Software Center.

So I instead, de-installed this (686) and installed the 32 bit version (x86?).

Several huge problems instantly vanished, once I got it up and running again.

(1) I was able to turn on, and monitor sound from each rail /channel /track and see and hear it in the master.
A lot of freaky non-results vanished, and things started to function more normally, in accord with expectations.

(if similar things had happened with an actual Neve rail, I would have pulled it and started tracing signals.)

(2) Most importantly, things in the editing area started working, like being able to select the content of a track and move it along the transport relative to other tracks. Features and commands seem to be operational, whereas in the 686 version, very little worked as expected.

With these two main problems out of the way, I was able to concentrate on other less serious but cripplingly annoying issues:

(1) It turned out that playing with the metering points in 686 gave the appearance of a fix, but sounds and signals continued to vanish on relaunch etc. . No similar buggy things are happening in the 386 version at the moment. Still that was a good tip, directing me to at least the expected function of those buttons.

(2) The FLOSS manuals were ok sometimes for orientation, but left out so much that I had to turn to Youtube videos for some clues to get things working even remotely as expected.
For example, knowing that the control/sync source must be set to “Internal” for the head position to behave (i.e., remain where I placed it etc.), was extremely important and helpful (picked this up from a YT video).

(3) The metronome was actually not behaving as expected in the 686 version (i.e., wouldn’t shut off), but seems to work better now. I still can’t find any explanation for how to control its volume, or how to simply and properly sync it with a Hydrogen drum track.

(4) The “detachable toolbars” may be a great feature if you know about them, and if they could be made to work in a dual-screen Linux environment predictably, but I’m passing on that feature for now. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to put the thing back! A nice big RESTORE TOOLBAR button on the main editor would be great to do that intuitively and easily.

(5) The problem of Ardour ‘chasing an external timecode’ was probably part of my initial bad experience, but nonetheless the 686 is so buggy that it needed no help to paralyze a newbie user. Some ‘red’ or ‘orange’ background on the setting when its not Internal would be a good feature, as it is with the SOLO buttons.

(6) The problem opening Ardour was traced to Linux disk-file-folder read/write permissions, as far as I can tell at the moment. As I noted on improving the FLOSS manual, Linux doesn’t normally allow users to access drives owned by ROOT or someone else, and this (needless) complication with Linux is indeed a pain in the ass.

(7) I’m glad you brought up the IRC thing, and that it is active, and people have one for Ardour. I haven’t used an IRC for about five years, and I’ve forgotten all about how to get onto one and how to find the Ardour one. Some clear instructions for newbies on how to do this would be great. Its not something I would have expected. I always assumed IRCs were for hackers and pirates, not naive innocent home-studio musicians. (lol)

(8) I don’t know what a SONAR or PT is, so that just shows how out of the loop I am. Believe it or not, I was a hardcore programmer back in the first days of MIDI, and reverse-engineered the FM modulation synthesis in the Yamaha DX-7, and created the first analyzer/display program for that keyboard on an Apple IIe, with a GUI interface before the ‘mouse’ had been invented!. We used the arrow keys and <> signs to navigate / tab between parameter boxes.
I nearly went blind debugging 6502 code from assembler-dumps onto dot-matrix printout rolls.

#8
686 Version may be buggy

I had actually installed the 686 version (4 gig, dual core), and forgotten about it.
When pondering whether I should try to reinstall Ardour, I noticed this in the Ubuntu Software Center.

http://ardour.org/node/2543

Sad to say if you are downloading from Ubuntu, you will run into tons of issues from Ubuntu’s compilation. I would STRONGLY suggest using the binary from here. This is sadly exactly why, and part of the reason for supporting the binary download from the site.

(3) The metronome was actually not behaving as expected in the 686 version (i.e., wouldn't shut off), but seems to work better now. I still can't find any explanation for how to control its volume, or how to simply and properly sync it with a Hydrogen drum track.

Preferences Window>Click Tab would be how to adjust the volume. How to match tempo, is something else. You can sync Hydrogen and Ardour, however there is no method in Ardour2 for MIDI Clock sync, which is what you want, Ardour3 however will have this functionality. So no easy answer for you on this right now sorry.

(4) The "detachable toolbars" may be a great feature if you know about them, and if they could be made to work in a dual-screen Linux environment predictably, but I'm passing on that feature for now. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to put the thing back! A nice big RESTORE TOOLBAR button on the main editor would be great to do that intuitively and easily.

Good idea, put it in Mantis when you get a moment (Issue Tracker link above) as that is where we keep bug reports and feature requests to make sure they don’t get lost.

(6) The problem opening Ardour was traced to Linux disk-file-folder read/write permissions, as far as I can tell at the moment. As I noted on improving the FLOSS manual, Linux doesn't normally allow users to access drives owned by ROOT or someone else, and this (needless) complication with Linux is indeed a pain in the ass.

Yea this sounds like you have an old version of Ardour, which given you are on Ubuntu and your description above, fits well sadly as they don’t tend to keep up to date. I am fairly certain I remember file permissions preventing opening being addressed so that you could open a session as read only in recent versions, but I could also be remembering wrong.

(7) I'm glad you brought up the IRC thing, and that it is active, and people have one for Ardour. I haven't used an IRC for about five years, and I've forgotten all about how to get onto one and how to find the Ardour one. Some clear instructions for newbies on how to do this would be great. Its not something I would have expected. I always assumed IRCs were for hackers and pirates, not naive innocent home-studio musicians. (lol)

That is exactly why we put it in the Help menu, of course given you are on an old version of Ardour(Knowing Ubuntu possibly several years old) then you may not have it present in your version sorry. Any recent version does have it though as a menu option under Help.

(8) I don't know what a SONAR or PT is, so that just shows how out of the loop I am. Believe it or not, I was a hardcore programmer back in the first days of MIDI, and reverse-engineered the FM modulation synthesis in the Yamaha DX-7, and created the first analyzer/display program for that keyboard on an Apple IIe, with a GUI interface before the 'mouse' had been invented!. We used the arrow keys and <> signs to navigate / tab between parameter boxes. I nearly went blind debugging 6502 code from assembler-dumps onto dot-matrix printout rolls.

Sonar and PT (ProTools) are two alternative proprietary DAW software, along with many other options like Logic, Digital Performer, CuBase, Nuendo, Reaper, etc.

Yea as Paul mentioned in the other thread, there is a lack of good documentation on Ardour right now sadly. The sad truth is that it take a lot of effort to write good documentation, and it isn’t very rewarding in many ways. The FLOSS is the most succesful effort to date, but as you noted is intended as an introduction, not a complete overview. The TechRef however is a much drier document intended for a complete overview, but is not completed as my life caught up with me to prevent me from spending time continuing it, and others that were involved have similar stories. That being said I am hoping to start a new version of the Tech Ref for A3 here before to long, but I have to have time to work in A3 first before I can. Given your notes on the FLOSS manual if you decide you want to help write documentation let me know, sounds like you could have some good input.

 Seablade
#9

Thanks Seablade:

I would be delighted to help you write/format /html-enhance your Tech Ref. manual, for free of course,
and I’m sure it would be fun as I learn how to use the program.

So I should re-install Ardour from here, I guess: How would I do that?
Would I issue a commandline thing from the terminal after downloading a few files?
I think I know how to de-install the one from Ubuntu.

Any help would be appreciated. I had better have the latest version,
if I’m going to help debug the manual.

peace
Nazaroo

#10

Well what you would do would be to download the appropriate version of Ardour from this site. The x86_64 is for 64 Bit machines, while the x86 is for 32 Bit machines. If you don’t know which, use the x86 (32-Bit) which will work on both. When you download it you will extract the contents of the tar archive, most GUIs can do this for you, but you can also use the command…

tar -xvf NAMEOFFILE

Replacing NAMEOFFILE with the actual file name(Including path if needed). This will extract the contents to a directory. In that directory will be a shell script, which you can run by doubleclicking on it in most UIs, or by running it by changing into the directory it is in and typing…

./install.sh

You may need to run it as sudo instead, can’t remember (so sudo ./install.sh instead)

This will install the software into your /opt directory. IIRC it will also create a link in /usr and maybe a desktop shortcut, can’t remember, but you can run it directly from the directory in /opt/ARDOURDIR/bin/ardour2 if I recall correctly. This way it stays completely seperate from your package management, and can be removed very easily if needed.

  Seablade
#11

I am running as root. I unpacked the file and it made a folder, and I read the README.txt included.

I clicked on the install.sh, and was prompted for the ‘run in terminal’ option, which seemed to be a good idea.
The first Warning text was as follows:



Welcome to the Ardour installer


!!! Warning !!!

The installer is running as the root user which is not the prefered method.
There are checks run at the end of the installer to help ensure proper operation
of Ardour (realtime priviledges, memory locking, frequency scaling).
Running as root will invalidate these tests.

Press ENTER to continue:

Pressing anything other than ENTER has no effect. Not a very responsive script. it kept going.

…

I keep forgetting that pressing ctrl-c doesn’t copy anything (i.e., text) in the terminal. Instead it ***king closes!.

aarrgh.

To actually copy text you have to find the menus (now moved, for no good reason) to the top of the Ubuntu bar.
There a “copy” option on the pulldown menu does seem to copy selected text in the terminal window.
I’ve always hated this stupid feature of the terminal (not being able to copy text showing, like critical error messages).
Now Ubuntu 11.10 has made it 400x worse, by moving all the program menus to some part of the screen having nothing to do with the current window, whatever program you are running. What a-holes.

So apparently, the first time I ran this script (and accidently closed the terminal) it installed or started to install Ardour,
and is now confused. I’m pressing on:

Press ENTER to continue:
Architecture is x86
Checking for required disk space
Unpacking bundle for x86

Checking system libs to see if they are compatible with Ardour.


Found existing Ardour installation.

Do you want to run the uninstaller /opt/Ardour-2.8.12_10146.uninstall.sh ? [y/n]:
#12

Here goes: (after a few tries):

Running uninstaller /opt/Ardour-2.8.12_10146.uninstall.sh

Removing existing Ardour installation at /opt/Ardour-2.8.12_10146


Installing Ardour 2.8.12 built from 10146 in /opt


Adding Ardour to the applications menu


Creating a desktop link for Ardour


Copying uninstall script to /opt


Checking to see if Jack is installed


Jack OK


System failed the quick sanity check… Looking for the cause


!!! WARNING !!! - Your system seems to use frequency scaling.

This can have a serious impact on audio latency. You have two choices:

(1) turn it off, e.g. by chosing the ‘performance’ governor.

(2) Use the HPET clocksource by passing “-c h” to JACK

(this second option only works on relatively recent computers)


Press ENTER to continue:

This is a bit cryptic for me.
I have no idea how to turn off “frequency scaling”, nor do I know how to setup JACK with commandline parameters.
I also have no idea whether my Dell Optiplex is “relatively recent” enough for option 2.

#13
Now Ubuntu 11.10 has made it 400x worse, by moving all the program menus to some part of the screen having nothing to do with the current window

Global menu was something I’ve always hated on just about every Mac OS - it always seemed like such a bad idea that I could only assume it must have originally been due to some limitation on the early operating systems - and then Ubuntu go and add it as a feature. One of the many things that makes 11.10 completely unusable (also, the Ubuntu version only works with some apps which have been specifically ‘tuned’ for Unity - which means we now have a broken feature which is… also… well… er… broken).

Ubuntu (and Gnome3) devs: - there is an accepted paradigm for a desktop UI which works well. It may not be as exciting and new as a touchscreen / tablet / phone UI, but it works. Please stop adding these ‘steering wheel on the roof’ features - which while they may be new and radical, the moment you actually try and use them for their intended purpose it becomes painfully apparent why no-one else is doing it that way.

#14

The command to copy and paste varies depending on the terminal software you are using sadly. The reason is because t here is a convention that CTRL+C will kill a running command in the foreground, this convention is much older than copy/paste IIRC. Thus you get confusion when mixing programs that need to do both.

For example in my terminal it is SHIFT+CTRL+C and SHIFT+CTRL+V to copy and paste respectively.

In as far as frequency scaling, the end result of that is that your processor will run slower than it can when processing audio by default, which might not be a bad thing in most cases, but in recording audio you want to do everything you can to prevent xruns and get clean audio, so it is generally considered a ‘bad thing’. The best way to chose a performance governor depends on the distribution you are using, for example I keep a widget on my desktop that tells me what clock speed my CPU is running at and allows me to quickly and easily switch between governor settings. But you can also do it on the commandline IIRC, if you want I can look up how to do this on the commandline again, it is a matter of typing echo 'performance' > /proc/SOMEFILE and I can’t remember what file it is off hand.

In as far as detached menus, honestly I don’t mind them as much as others do apparently. Yes they certainly take some getting used to but it just isn’t something I have minded all that much, of course that may come from having spent a significant amount of time on OS X. That being said there are enough ‘Apple Way or No Way’ things involved with OS X that I have other things to be frustrated about there. Thus why I switched my workstation back to Linux and have been enjoying it ever since.

 Seablade
#15

@nazaroo2: please stop using the forums here as a way of exploring your new-to-me issues with Unix. We’re happy to help out with Ardour, JACK and other bits and pieces related to audio and media workflows, but it gets really irritating to constantly be dealing with people who complain about how Unix/Linux works when what they are really complaining about is their unfamiliarity with the platform.

Traditionally, copy-n-paste on X Window (the GUI system on more or less all Unix systems except OS X) is done with the mouse and without any need to use the keyboard at all. You select with a left button press-drag-release and paste with middle button. If you’re used to this, Windows and OS X default behaviour feels clunky and appalling - or maybe I’m just not familiar enough with it.

“not a very responsive script” … it gave you a warning. Its a fairly basic script, not a months-in-the-making GUI installer (we’ve got better things to do right now). As such, having given you the warning, there are only two options: (a) you press ctrl-c because you’ve realized your mistake and want to quit (b) you carry on and ignore the warning.

re: frequency scaling: sure, there’s no advice on how to do this because there is no distribution-independent method of controlling it. This is partly why we encourage you to start from a Linux distribution that specifically targets the needs of pro-audio and music creation, rather than one aimed at general purpose computing. In addition, people’s needs vary quite dramatically, and so there are people like me who disable all frequency scaling on their machines and then there are other people who run helper apps that specifically disable it when JACK starts up. The warning is there because frequency scaling can and does seriously interfere with what you plan to do with Ardour & JACK. Given what most people pay me for Ardour, and the absurd range of variation in Linux distributions, there’s a limit to the level of hand-holding that our installation process can do with this issue.

#16

@linuxdsp: there are merits and demerits to the global application menu bar. there are also those who prefer it and those who dislike it. it doesn’t help that the version of it in current Ubuntu systems is not very well implemented. its a bit pointless talking about this as though there are absolutes in UI design. in this particular case, most actual user workflow studies (I.e. video, eyeball tracking, hand motion distance tracking, etc. etc) are strongly supportive of the design. That doesn’t mean it should work well for you too or that you should bow down and accept it. One big issue with moving it to systems built on X Window is that X is lacking a couple of key features that it work “better” on OS X (notably the idea of different layers/levels in the z-axis of the screen). Without a window manager that imposes this idea on things, and without apps that use it to correctly maintain relative layering, its always likely to be more of a mess.

#17
Traditionally, copy-n-paste on X Window (the GUI system on more or less all Unix systems except OS X) is done with the mouse and without any need to use the keyboard at all. You select with a left button press-drag-release and paste with middle button. If you're used to this, Windows and OS X default behaviour feels clunky and appalling - or maybe I'm just not familiar enough with it.

I am going to go with whatever you aren’t familiar with feels clunky and appalling, as I find the more I can do with the keyboard the better. As such I much prefer the CTRL+C/CTRL+V combinations.

                         Seablade
#18

Thanks for everyone’s comments.

I don’t mean to bog down the board with irrelevant complaints.
My purpose is more in documenting what I am experiencing,
so that others who follow won’t be surprised, and will have some clues,
as to what is going on and what to do, whether I had those clues or not.

Some people (like those who do the Gentoo dist.) think that each user must suffer all the frustrations
that previous path-treaders endured, like it is a kind of initiation process.
Well, my life doesn’t revolve around following some weird military philosophy.
If I can save time and avoid a hassle, I appreciate it.
My purpose is focussed on getting Ardour installed and working, and learning how to use it.
I know there must be some ‘learning curve’ issues, but I also know that having some help
really saves a lot of time and fuss. I know that you don’t really know something until you
muck it up a few times, and do it over and over and over, like in martial arts.
But all that practicing can wait: I will have plenty of time to repeat monotonous chores,
so that I can do them easily without thinking later.

Right now, I just want to get up and running.
I can memorize techniques later,
and I don’t really believe that learning is enhanced by maximizing the mistakes one can make.

peace
Nazaroo

#19

P.S. I have a generous amount of faith in all the work you have done with Ardour here,
and I really believe in your program. The idea of shareware/freeware also has been very appealing
to me for many years, and I have seen this idea cause fantastic growth in the computer world.

Just wanted to say I appreciate your efforts and your offerings, and thank you.
I’m sure you don’t get that often enough,
although I’m equally sure you are all big boys, and have sensible expectations
(like accepting the fact that 10 lepers may be healed, but only one comes back to thank the healer).
Just wanted to say thanks.

Nazaroo

#20

@nazaroo2: “good judgement comes from experience. experience comes from … bad judgement” :))