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Forums > Software: Linux

Ayone using Ardour?

hueseph	Date: September 5, 2006 @ 7:35 PM I've got it running on my Mac using X11. I know it was designed for Linux and Unix users but it seems to work with OSX. Any pros or cons?
leedsquietman	Date: September 6, 2006 @ 4:40 AM I've tried running it on Kubuntu Linux, a bit fiddly coming from a cubase interface and more like a digital tracking machine. It can do amazing things with routing through JACK that Cubase cannot - sadly, I can only get it to work on the crummy onboard audio card as my PCMCIA Echo Indigo IO is not detected yet (I am trying to make it happen as apparently the JACK interface is compatible with Layla and Gina by Echo) but I know squat about Linux, I installed Kubuntu as a backup system to windows and now find myself using it all the time to surf. However, I can get latencies that are way better than on windows using the onboard sound. It has some reasonable plug-ins built in and nice track and mixer views and some good mix automation parameters, but it's not designed for looping audio or MIDI work, doesn't support VST plugs at all on MacOSX and on Linux only if you're a Linux whizz who can compile Linux kernels etc. It doesn't support Rewire. I would say it's more akin to Audacity except with a much better mixer set up but without Audacity's editing power. I think it has great potential if developed further, it could use some extra editing functions, better hardware detection (really a fault with Linux rather than Ardour per se) and support for VST at least. MIDI and Rewire - don't expect much functionality in a freeware program anytime soon. I am going to try recording a song with it to see how it pans out.
shouhei	Date: September 6, 2006 @ 12:27 PM hm that looks very interesting. if I get another hard drive I'm gonna set up a new nix partition and try it. I've been looking for an excuse to go back to linux for a while, but I pretty much need windows for music
leedsquietman	Date: September 6, 2006 @ 6:45 PM That's what I did, I got a 300 GB external HDD because all the audio on my laptop internal drive was killing performance. I tried Kubuntu on live CD first, liked what I saw and set up a 30 GB partition for it on the new drive, it is pretty cool. I use it all the time now for e-mail and web surfing (Firefox on Linux is cool and KDE Konqueror is growing on me) The linux ALSA and Jack drivers are getting performance from my onboard audio card that is not possible in windows, I can barely run 4 tracks of audio in Cubase even with ASIO4ALL on my crummy internal card and that's with a 25 ms latency, but in Ardour I imported 12 audio tracks from a project and it played it back great with 11 ms latency. HOwever, I still need my Echo card working, the onboard sound only supports 16/44 and has a significantly worse Signal to Noise ratio. Ardour worked well for playing back and mixing these audio tracks but hate the fact that EQ isn't available on the channel strip, I added it as an insert effect. Still, I don't know how to use it properly yet, so could be me :doh: One Linux audio app. I can definately recommend however is Hydrogen, a free drum machine step-editor, it is a snap to use and create beats and some awesome extra kits are available for download.