Ardour

[Tony]

I was chatting last night with Matt Bellingham and from some sessions
I've done lately there are some serious bugs with Ardour.

Firstly this email is make people aware of some of the problems I've
encountered so you can work round them and secondly, if I've missed
some then others can add them as a string to this email and maybe
other work rounds/fixes can be made?

1. Tracking: Individual tracks added after initial take, playing
out of sync.

I recorded a band and then added the guitar myself after, even though
I dropped the buffer rate, the play back was totally out of time with
the recording.

Solution: Re-boot the computer a couple of times if necessary and
vola its all in time.

2. Tracking: Tracks playing back down the wrong channel strips
occasionally even duplicated.

During playback through the desk to perform a rough mix before using
the DAW software, it became apparent that tracks although assigned to
individual channel strips played back down a completely different one,
ie guitar playing back down the same channel strip as vocals.

Solution: Unfortunately once again, its a couple of re-boots but it
does settle down, routing them elsewhere on the desk doesn't work.

3. Track/Edit: Exporting Files.

Ardour is not exporting stereo files correctly, they are totally
unbalanced.

Solution: Either export as a mono file or if you do bounce them as
stereo, convert them to mono before mixing them.

These are just a couple of problems I've incurred but if they help
anyone then its not a wasted email on here.

I'm hoping to get in to do more recording/mixing and mastering so if
anyone else knows of any bugs or errors in Studio's A or B, please
feel free to add them to this, as you will be helping me out too. Even
if you haven't a solution, its good to know someone else has had
problems and you don't sit scratching your head wondering why
something isn't working

Regards
Tony (HNC2)

[Steve]

Hi Tony

Like yourself i have been mainly using Ardour as my DAW of choice
(mainly cos its free and i can run it at home).Its good to see that im
not the only person thats come across some bugs.

These may be minor compared to the ones you listed but here goes:

4. Plug-ins:
After inserting either a pre-fade or post-fade plugin the channel
strip in Ardour has remained completely blank. Because of this i cant
enable it or open it to tweak the settings.

Solution:
Opening the mixer window, you can see that they ARE all there and you
can enable them and tweak them to your hearts content. OR, saving,
closing and restarting the session brings the plug-ins up on the
session window.

5. EQ:
Until recently I have been using Ubuntu (Linux) to run Ardour at home,
during the ITB mix assignment i added an EQ plug-in to one of the
tracks, saved it and handed it in. When it came to marking and
checking the session, Matt ran the Ardour session on the Mac Pro in
studio C and there was no EQ!

Solution:
Opening the session in Ubuntu Studio in studio C showed that the EQ
was in fact there. This turned out to be a random compatability issue
between OS's. It may seem minor but it nearly cost me some vital
marks.

6: Panning automation:
Using Ardour in Ubuntu, while doing a recent mix i decided to use some
panning automation on one of the tracks. However, everytime i tried to
change the automation option (read, write, play, etc) the session
crashed completely and closed itself.

Solution:
I assume it was a problem with running Ardour in ubuntu as it has
worked on the Mac in the past. Still not sure so no real solution has
been found.

Apart from some bugs i think im still gonna try and use Ardour as i
have grown accustomed to it and can find my way around it ok (and its
free and i dont have the pennies for Pro tools or Logic). If i do come
across any other bugs (time permitted) i will try to find some kind of
work around. Hopefully now i got a Mac it shouldnt be so buggy
(fingers crossed)

Regards
Steve (HND1)