I have found many spectrum analysers for linux, but none that can run as a plugin in ardour. Having to route the signal manually is getting old and is slowing my workflow, I wonder if anybody knows of a plugin I can use instead?
I’m using Voxengo Span on ArdourVST. It’s stable enough to rely on it. I’m not aware of any real alternative to this (Invada Meter is native on Linux, but really unstable).
I found Invada meter very stable on my system. At first glance, graphics seem a bit inaccurate, but once you get used to it, it does the job very well.
But a lv2 “span”-like would be great.
Wow, VoxengoSPAN is a really nice free plugin for this. Just downloaded it and played with it a while, I really liked it.
Thanks for the tip!
Renoise have just updated their built-in spectrum analyser so that you can display 2 channels on top of each other to compare. I doubt that is possible in an LV2 plugin because it would have to be for one channel but it’s a cool idea.
I’ll definitely check out Invada Meter
You can also run jaaa or japa using a send. There are no doubt other spectrum analyzers that can be run this way, too
baudline is great too of course, but also not for plugin use,
I didnt know about Invada meter, it works stable here too, great news!
I use baudline, it’s great but I really want something better integrated into the workflow. I checked out Invada Meter. It’s good but it is not very details and you cannot make the display any bigger. Really I would like something like the JAMIN or Renoise analyser but as an LV2 plugin. For the moment I am routing audio from Ardour to a line input of renoise and using the analyser that way.
Surely if you have to use a VST host to run Voxengo SPAN, then you may as well use another JACK client application e.g. baudline (as already mentioned)? You could run SPAN inside a Windows VST compatible build of ardour (but personally I think that should be an absolute last resort).
@joegiampaol: To be honest, linuxdsp is right, that is just as much hassle as what I am doing at the moment so there is not much point 
I don’t know how much of a hassle it can be to just fire up Voxengo and connect the master outs of Ardour to it, I created a launcher right on my taskbar that fires up Voxengo inmediately such as “./fst.exe /path_to_voxengo_dir/voxengo.dll” so no terminal use is necessary, it starts inmediately (about one second) and then I just connect the master outs of Mixbus or Ardour to it, and I make that connection directly inside ardour, not through qjackctl, although you could create a patchbay definition file an it would autoconnect it instantly as you fire up Voxengo, and that’s it, I’m sure it would even be faster than browsing for the plugin inside Ardour or Mixbus…
If you can think of something faster than that I must be doing something wrong…
It’s not that it’s that much of a hassle, it’s that it’s a hassle compared to just loading up a plugin like you would on any other platform. I can deal with it for now, but it would be great to get a proper plugin at some point, I don’t mind paying for it even.
I tried VoxengoSPAN as a plugin in the vst-enabled Ardour which ships with AVLinux 5.02, but Ardour would not allow it because track had only 2 outputs and VoxengoSPAN has 8 inputs. (In contrast Qtractor will run VoxengoSPAN as a plugin, and it “works” but there is no sound output, possibly because Qtractor is confused about the 8 outputs).
Next I tried running VoxengoSPAN with vsthost (which uses dssi_vst). Then I connected it to Ardour2 via both a “send” (1-way) and an “insert” (2-way, essentially like a plugin). This works fine because select which inputs/outputs to connect to so the mismatch in input/output numbers does not matter. The advantage of doing a send or insert is that Ardour will remember the connections. You still have to start VoxengoSPAN before Ardour, but if it is started Ardour will reconnect with it. I think is slightly better than connecting via the MasterOUT because in that case you need to use Jack Sessions to re-do the connections. (But maybe dssi-vst or fst could be written with Jack Session support to even fix this problem?).
To further simplify you could make a simple script to start VoxengoSPAN and Ardour at once. Ok, not as good as using it as a plugin, but not that bad.
Spectrum3D is a native linux visualizer standalone :
on a no-plugin side, I always prefer non-windows apps first (althought I did no sell my beloved Reaktor).
I would recommend VoxengoSPAN, although it’s a VST plugin all you have to do is fire it up with a VST host like FST and you just connect Ardour’s master outs to it and that’s it. It’s quite stable and runs without issues.
Screenie:
Download link:
I’m not having any trouble with Voxengo Span on ArdourVST, maybe the version I use only has 2 outputs. Also, after 8 months of professional studio work I really can say ArdourVST with just a bunch a vsts (I only use 2) is realiable enough for critical work, I have crashes once every while but never on critical stuff and I also doubt it’s because of the 2 VSTs that I use…
Also, I agree with Linuxdsp that Ardourvst should be avoided completely, but when it comes to a good limiter and spectrum analyzer I’m afraid there is no other choice than this or buying expensive external hardware that is a pain to connect on inserts every time and forces you to export real time only.
You are using baudline? How do you deal with the problem, that there is no way to plot a logarithmic frequency axis? Linear scaling is totaly useless for (practical) audio purposes because the most interesting data is squeezed to the 1st few pixles at the left border.
Are the any spectrum analysers available with logarithmic x scale?