dedicated Hobby Musician & Linux User

[talby]

Hello,
I am a dedicated Hobby Musician & Linux User now adding to it some personal home recording. Guess what, recording and audio editing shall take place in my Debian Linux environment.

I mainly aim to refine my musicianship by constantly reviewing my classical guitar, drums and piano rehearsals. Maybe some good recording might become shared with friends.

I am no more a newby, neither in playing instruments nor in technical education about computers, instruments, electronic accessories and software, but haven't recorded and edited anything for the last 15 years. Years ago all my recording equipment was analog: a small mixing console, a 4 track tape recorder, and a that time small DAW for MS Windows the versions of both of them nowadays having evolved to almost no more recognizable much bigger products. So, giving personal home recording a new start now, I am certainly going to reuse my microphones and accessories, will most likely replace my small mixing console with a nowadays small 4 channel audiointerface, and am for sure in need to find some new multitrack recording software.
Looking forward to learning a lot from you and sharing my knowledge where applicable.
Best wishes,
Talby

[Basslint]

Hello! Since you seem to do a lot of tracking, I heartily recommend Ardour as a DAW.

[RyanH]

Welcome!

[talby]

Hello! Since you seem to do a lot of tracking, I heartily recommend Ardour as a DAW.

Thanks a lot! After having searched already for a while, I repeated it with a special eye on Ardour.
My current understanding is the following about software of potential interest for my usecase, sorted by its purpose from a small (limited) and powerful solution to a big, studio alike solution:
(1) ocenaudio, for currently only recording in mono or stereo
(2) tenacity, enhancing to multitrack recording
(3) ardour, enhancing from multitrack recording to digital music creation with support for MIDI and virtual instruments
alternatives to keep in mind could be: QTractor, Waveform, DaVinci Resolve (Fairlight)

My main interest in software features, by priority are:
(a) record from a 4+ channel USB audio interface at least with 24bit/96 kHz WAV
(b) auto-pause recording if silence detected by threshold is longer than 5 to 10 seconds, then auto-resume recording without missing the beginning of the first newly to be recorded sound signal
(c) monitoring with very short latency between signal IN (mic at USB audio interface) to signal OUT (headphone at USB audio interface)
(d) basic editing functions (mark/copy/paste/cut/delete/trim, export/import to/from other track and even file)
(e) few but efficient effects, each with only manageable small amount of parameter options (about 5 to 10 band EQ, stereo panning, volume normalization, compressor, reverb)
(f) good quality format conversion from 24bit/96 kHz WAV to FLAC, and good quality downsampling down to 16bit/44.1kHz WAV, to AAC or M4A, or to MP3 (192kbps VBR)

Well, still some work to do for figuring out which software to get accustomed to first. Specially features (a) and (b) are difficult to find information about. If (1a) exists, then it might be my first choice for the moment, unless I would find any software offering (b).

In which of the subforums should I best place all this as a separate question, separate from my introduction to myself in this thread here?
Best regards, Marco

[Michael Willis]

I don't know of anything that will do (b), but Ardour will easily do the rest. Ardour does have some LUA scripting ability which might accommodate (b), but I think the hard part will be picking up recording again without missing the beginning of the new signal.

[talby]

I don't know of anything that will do (b), but Ardour will easily do the rest. Ardour does have some LUA scripting ability which might accommodate (b), but I think the hard part will be picking up recording again without missing the beginning of the new signal.

Thanks for this confirmation!
Concerning the auto-pause/auto-resume feature (b), I seem to be spoiled by some iOS apps, which I currently tested for using them as a simple classical guitar recording solution.

[novalix]

Concerning the auto-pause/auto-resume feature (b), I seem to be spoiled by some iOS apps, which I currently tested for using them as a simple classical guitar recording solution.

Most likely you would not monitor your playing through an app like this.
An auto-resume feature is only possible by implementing a lookahead function which basically means that the incoming signal is recorded with a certain delay.

Most probably the best working solution for pause/resume-control is to get some kind of remote control gadget (like a footswitch) and configure it accordingly.

Regarding low-latency monitoring:
An alternative route (leading to zero latency) would be to decouple the recording and monitoring chain.
An all-in-one solution for that would be a small analog desk with a build in standard compliant digital interface like the soundcraft signature or some of the tascam thingies.

[Michael Willis]

Any audio interface I've ever used has a way to do direct monitoring, but I always set up my DAW for low latency and monitor its output because I want to hear the processed audio.

If you're using a sample rate of 96kHz, then even a fairly conservative buffer setting of 256 samples x 3 frames per period will only add 8ms of latency. Let's be honest, that's less latency than speaking to somebody a few meters away.

[talby]

For the case this post appears double, please excuse me, I submitted it here again (with slightly improved text) because it after hours did not appear online, maybe the first submision failed for some reason.

Yes, you both are absolutely right, and it requests me to clarify that I mixed up two use cases.

The one about short monitor latency is for playing an instrument and using the recorder software with its plugins as a small effects device for generating a nice sound. To my knowledge this kind of plugins are called Input Response (IR) modules. I have in mind to maybe(!) expand also into this direction in the future.

The other use case, my primary goal I wish to accomplish soon, is recording my rehearsal sessions when practicing classical guitar. I would not need any live monitor signal from the recoding software as I hear the original classical guitar anyway perfectly. Recording the reheasals is about later analyzing what I practiced by listening to the recording, studying what to improve, what to focus my next work on. For this use case it is quite comfortable, as I do it currently with an app on my iOS cell phone as the recorder and "post-session monitor" device, to start the recording and to not bother about filled memory space so much as the usual breaks for thinking about my playing, freshly concentrating, planning in mind a next playing of some phrase or piece, all this time will not occupy memory. This approach works perfect for me by the help of the cell phone! But I want to move this from the cell phone to some better recording devices, hoping that the one or the other take might be worth it to share it with friends. Anyway, I will consider how a foot pedal could be involved, its a nice idea.

[tseaver]

@talby

Recording the reheasals is about later analyzing what I practiced by listening to the recording, studying what to improve, what to focus my next work on. For this use case it is quite comfortable, as I do it currently with an app on my iOS cell phone as the recorder and "post-session monitor" device, to start the recording and to not bother about filled memory space so much as the usual breaks for thinking about my playing, freshly concentrating, planning in mind a next playing of some phrase or piece, all this time will not occupy memory. This approach works perfect for me by the help of the cell phone! But I want to move this from the cell phone to some better recording devices, hoping that the one or the other take might be worth it to share it with friends. Anyway, I will consider how a foot pedal could be involved, its a nice idea.

I often use Ardour to record my practice and songwriting sessions. IIUC, your "start recording when sound happens" requirement is not really needed: given how little disk space a single mic (or a stereo pair) consumes, one can just record "infinitely" while futzing around in front of the mic, and then just delete the unwanted bits afterward. The non-destructive editing one can do in any current DAW means that one never risks losing an "important" bit when chopping up a recorded session into its "relevant" bits.

[talby]

Dear All,
I received an amazing welcome, thank you!
I am currently evaluating hands-on many of the available options. And there are many options available, which You will know already. I of course keep especially in mind to watch out for what you have pointed me to, including to think over my and alternative worklfows.
While still heavily busy with running personal hands-on tests in order to feel what will work for me, after having read and watched a lot about solutions which nicely serve others, I am looking forward to soon meeting you in the topic specific forums, then!
Best wishes, Talby.

[Karren Brady]

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