AV Linux+Ardour+QU-24

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

New to AV Linux & Ardour.
Jack sees my Allen&Heath qu-24 mixer, all 32 channels. Ardour sees all 32 channels as well, Ardour tracks all the sound put thru all the 32 channels, but only the controls on the mixer work, if I move a slider on Ardour nothing happens on the mixer and that goes the same for the mixer. I get sound coming thru all the 32 channels, but the controls don’t seem to be synchronized.
Is anyone able to help me or know where I might be able to get some help. Allen&Heath seem to only focus on Apple products or Microsoft products. They say that there is to many distro’s.
Thank you for listening.

#2

Well a couple of things…

  1. A&H has a piece of software to translate their MIDI control to Mackie protocols, but it only runs on OS X, so you won’t be able to use it for Mackie control, not a huge deal
  2. If using generic MIDI, has a MIDI control spec file been written for it? Have you already selected this file?

It is important to note that according to their MIDI docs on the Qu, fader control etc. uses channel N+1 compared to what the Qu might be set to. So make sure you are listening and transmitting on the appropriate channel. This is just from a quick glance through their docs, but the first thing that stands out to me.

        Seablade
#3

I’m new to all this so I’m not following you, do I have to have some special protocols written for AV Linux, Ardour and the QU to be able to talk to each other. Sorry about being a pain, but I’m not sure where to go for help. On the A&H site they have a protocol written for windows to talk to Qbase. I have contacted A&H and they say that Apple and Windows is a bigger market and they will not be supporting Linux. The people that I have talked to at A&H said that engineers do’nt use Linux for recordings.

#4

Yea, you obviously didn’t talk to anyone that knew what they were doing at A&H then, considering a fair portion of their consoles now run Linux in one form or another. A&H has never officially supported Linux, however they have unofficially provided some help in the past (Such as the Linux version of the iLive editor etc.)

That being said, what you are asking requires someone write a support file to support it, not a very difficult thing but generally implies a couple of things:

  1. They understand MIDI and how it can be used for remote control of a DAW
  2. They have access to a Qu console for testing

It doesn’t sound like you understand enough about MIDI to qualify for #1 at this time, so you will need to get someone else to write it. One of the first things to confirm though is that you can get MIDI from the console into any software(Meaning there is a way to get MIDI or OSC from the console into Linux, often the answer is yes as the console has a MIDI spec, but not always), which may require a bit of knowledge about Linux.

It isn’t that a special protocol needs to be written persay, it is that Ardour needs to be told how to understand the MIDI commands being sent, and that the MIDI commands have a way to be received in Linux (Likely yes but needs to be confirmed)

       Seablade

An engineer that does recordings in Linux, and has several A&H consoles:)