using Ardour as a multiple-area console

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

Hi @ all
i want to use Ardour to route multiple audio-sources to multiple areas.
now i want to change the input discription in the Mixer GUI. i’ve only the 2 Input channels from my soundcard to choose, but i want to insert some instances of Alsaplayer, that i can choose the input Source direct in the Mixer GUI.

can someone help.

Thanks
RFA

#2

Hi,
Assuming you have started alsaplayer with the “-o jack” option (some distributions may package the JACK plugin for alsaplayer separately,) then when you select “edit” from the track or bus Input button you should see a new tab in the “available connections” pane with the name of the alsaplayer instance. If you select that tab then you can click on the “out_1” and “out_2” to move the ports to the input areas. If you are running multiple alsaplayers you can identify them from the process id which is used in the jack client name - I’m not sure if there is a way of changing this behaviour in alsaplayer.

You can also do this using e.g. qjackconnect.

#3

You can also define the JACK connections directly when you launch alsaplayer. This would guarantee that the “first” alsaplayer is always connected to the first ardour input. You could launch ardour and all your alsaplayers from a single script:

ardour some-template-session-name &
alsaplayer -igtk2 -ojack -d ardour:input-0,ardour:input-1 &
alsaplayer -igtk2 -ojack -d ardour:input-2,ardour:input-3 &