Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

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zoco
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Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by zoco »

I want to select two different soundcards. Why? I want my computers soundcard to monitor the DAW output signal and not the u-phoria interface.
One device for input (u-phoria interface), and another device (internal soundcard) for output (exactly as shown in the image below).

I got it done exactly as wished in Audacity by simply selecting both for input and output (without doing anything else), and it worked immediately without time problems, latency or any other problem.
I tried it in Ardour where i want to use it that way, but i get a failure as shown in the image below.

Both results several times the same on two different computers in several attempts for each computer (as described above, audacity simply succeeded, ardour refuses).

Anyone knows how to get Ardour set this way, using one device for input (u-phoria interface), and another device (internal soundcard) for output

Image
AndersBiork
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by AndersBiork »

The Ardour manual suggests it can be done.
http://manual.ardour.org/setting-up-you ... io_device/

Also this thread might be of interest to you.
https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-4 ... llel/90610
The possible solution using Jack which Paul Davis refers to in the thread, http://jackaudio.org/faq/multiple_devices.html , seems a bit complicated to me. But maybe you are more motivated to get it to work. :-)

Cheers

Anders

My mother tongue is swedish. Running KXstudio on Xubuntu 22.04. No wine. No whine. But beers.

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milo
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by milo »

Ardour outsources all of its audio i/o to JACK, and I know you can set up JACK to do this. In the qjackctl setup dialog you can specify the input and output to different devices. On my machine I get intolerable latency that way, so I don't bother.
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by Michael Willis »

milo wrote:Ardour outsources all of its audio i/o to JACK, and I know you can set up JACK to do this.
Well, yes, if you pick JACK. You can pick ALSA, in which case it more or less goes directly to the driver.

I think the general answer is the same though... Yes, in theory there are ways to use multiple sound devices, but in practice it is a lot of trouble, and you're probably better off getting a single interface with the capability to cover your needs.
zoco
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by zoco »

AndersBiork wrote:The Ardour manual suggests it can be done.
http://manual.ardour.org/setting-up-you ... io_device/

Also this thread might be of interest to you.
https://discourse.ardour.org/t/ardour-4 ... llel/90610
The possible solution using Jack which Paul Davis refers to in the thread, http://jackaudio.org/faq/multiple_devices.html , seems a bit complicated to me. But maybe you are more motivated to get it to work. :-)

Cheers

Anders
Thank you for this help. I will jump into it next time i am going to make music and got my interface in use.
milo wrote:Ardour outsources all of its audio i/o to JACK, and I know you can set up JACK to do this. In the qjackctl setup dialog you can specify the input and output to different devices. On my machine I get intolerable latency that way, so I don't bother.
Michael Willis wrote:Well, yes, if you pick JACK. You can pick ALSA, in which case it more or less goes directly to the driver.
I have also tried jack for this, and will believe that can do it. But i possible could not make the right connections as it did not work.
Can you or anyone else help me with a tutorial to get this done in jack?

For the alsa part. I also got it working over alsa with audacity. I like jack very much, but alsa is not bad at all either.
Michael Willis wrote:I think the general answer is the same though... Yes, in theory there are ways to use multiple sound devices, but in practice it is a lot of trouble, and you're probably better off getting a single interface with the capability to cover your needs.
That is exactly why i am eager to find answers to my question. In audacity it needed no more then simply set the different wanted input and output and it immediately worked. And i think it is handy in some situations. For me it would be. This gave me the i think good idea that it is possible and simple. So i want this in ardour. And if that seems not to be possible it would wonder me huge. i am willing to believe it is not possible as i now read in your links.
But there is also written that ardour provides what is needed in a studio, and then i think i will not be the only one who wants to use two interfaces. So it surprises me that ardour can not do this. Audacity can, it is possible, so why not ardour? And if not ardour, then hopefully jack can. Do you follow and understand my thoughts about this?
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by milo »

There are some screenshots on this page: https://alansanderson.band/2017/09/04/f ... me-studio/

I wrote this a couple of years ago when I bought my USB audio interface and had to figure out how to set it up on Linux. The screenshots are in the "Using it with JACK" section, and show where to click in the qjackctl settings dialog to individually set the input and output devices. Note that the way I described in that section is not the easiest way to set up JACK. For some reason on that system (and only that system, as far as I have seen) the easy way to set it up was grayed out and I had to dig through the deeper settings to do it.

Good luck!
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by sysrqer »

Can your internal card handle 48khz?
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by zoco »

milo wrote:There are some screenshots on this page: https://alansanderson.band/2017/09/04/f ... me-studio/

I wrote this a couple of years ago when
Thank you Milo. I will read that later and try to use it when i have the time for it.
sysrqer wrote:Can your internal card handle 48khz?
As far as i know it can. It can handle above that rate (HDA), and when i set an ardour project at 48 kHz everything goes as it should. Is this what you mean?
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by rghvdberg »

Ardour with alsa backend can only use one soundcard for audio in and out. Won't work otherwise.

With jack as backend you can (after some tinkering) use multiple cards.
Jack comes with two handy utilities called alsa_in / alsa_out to set up extra jack ports for alsa devices.
There's also zita-ajbridge that does the same trick but with better audio quality.

http://jackaudio.org/faq/multiple_devices.html
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by sysrqer »

zoco wrote: As far as i know it can. It can handle above that rate (HDA), and when i set an ardour project at 48 kHz everything goes as it should. Is this what you mean?
Yes, pretty much. Why don't you post your question on the ardour IRC? The two main devs are usually there and could answer your question very quickly I suspect, rgareus is almost always online. Doesn't seem much point getting frustrated by the responses on this forum when you can get the answer straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by zoco »

sysrqer wrote:Doesn't seem much point getting frustrated by the responses on this forum
Perhaps i will go ask there. Thank you for this idea.
But were do you read frustration? I do not get frustrated about the answers i get as long as they are relevant and not simply naming something as impossible which i already did (with another program). So i am not frustrated at all but instead very thankful for help and answers. Simple as that. But any discussion is over so i stop with this last explanation.
rghvdberg wrote:Ardour with alsa backend can only use one soundcard for audio in and out. Won't work otherwise.

With jack as backend you can (after some tinkering) use multiple cards.
Jack comes with two handy utilities called alsa_in / alsa_out to set up extra jack ports for alsa devices.
There's also zita-ajbridge that does the same trick but with better audio quality.

http://jackaudio.org/faq/multiple_devices.html
Thank you for that link. This one i will also going to read and try at my next opportunity.
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by rghvdberg »

I asked the exact same question in Ardour irc and the answer I gave previously is the answer I got there.

Why it works in Audacity and not in Ardour I don't know.
Ardour targets pro audio and my guess is the way that Audacity managed to use multiple alsa soundcards for audio in and out isn't a good implementation for Ardour.
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by sysrqer »

zoco wrote:
sysrqer wrote:Doesn't seem much point getting frustrated by the responses on this forum
Perhaps i will go ask there. Thank you for this idea.
But were do you read frustration? I do not get frustrated about the answers i get as long as they are relevant and not simply naming something as impossible which i already did (with another program).
I say frustrated because I remember the other threads, I think this is the third including one you deleted? Judging by the latest post in this thread you're indeed being told the same thing as you were in the previous thread, this time sighted from a reputable source, so your assumption that it must be possible has to be at least questioned unless you hear otherwise.
zoco
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by zoco »

rghvdberg wrote:I asked the exact same question in Ardour irc and the answer I gave previously is the answer I got there.

Why it works in Audacity and not in Ardour I don't know.
Ardour targets pro audio and my guess is the way that Audacity managed to use multiple alsa soundcards for audio in and out isn't a good implementation for Ardour.
Thank you for clearing that up. Great. That saves me the trouble to ask there.
To bad. It worked nice in audacity. Perhaps it would be a good option for the future for Ardour? I can not imagine i am the only one who wishes that.
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Re: Ardour monitor settings to use two soundcards

Post by rghvdberg »

This will never be implemented in Ardour because of clock drift between two soundcards, at least that's my theory.
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