Newbie questions on ardour

Hi to you all,
thanks to the developers and everybody involved.
I´ve been testing ardour on my laptop since its first beta for OSX was out… with 2.5 running over X11 I´ve found that I want to give it a go in the studio for the first time. It´s the strongest sequencer in my laptop now, most stable and sounding great. The native version doesn´t work as well; this would be 2.4.1 right?

Now I have a couple of questions…
I own PPC G5s…so is there any workaround to use VSTs or AUs running on X11?
Is there a extension/plug,…with support for OMF import/export or any other way to interact with other DAWs or video NLEs?

I´ve searched the forums and I understand that the answer to both questions is no…but …it works so good that if only I could use my DSP plugs and keep interacting with others I´d be one more in the boat straight away…

You cannot run VST’s in Ardour on OS X. AU’s are not supported in the X11 version. The 2.5 native version will appear. Its just been interrupted my my relocation to Berlin.

Most DAW-to-DAW interaction these days still seems to happen via BWF stem/track exports, and Ardour is no exception. Its the most reliable, most secure, least-hassle option. Ardour 2.X lacks an easy way to do this for all tracks, but it is implemented in the 3.X branch (not yet released).

We cannot support OMF because of its proprietary nature. The only open source/reverse engineering implementations of OMF that I know of are incomplete and thus not useful for this purpose.

Thanks Paul, 2.5 seems like a huge step forwards for me, I´ll be looking forward to get this working in a studio.
¿Should I expect this massive improvements from native 2.5 compared to 2.4 as well? It has made an incredible diference to me in the X11 version.

…gotta say that I´ve already downloaded ubuntustudio to try and give it a go with an old PIII…if only it seems half good…I might go the linux way eventually…

Again, thanks, you don´t get to talk to the developers of anything unless they are willing to.
Enjoy Berlin.

PD: Not much that I can offer, but if needed or wanted I´ll happily become the spanish translator for ardour. Bye.

Hi Zaratero,

I use the VST bridge from the Audacity project for some VSTs on OS X (on an iBook G4). Works pretty well, but I cannot save presets, which is not a problem for me (since I use only two VSTs regularly) but may be for you.

Hi Jan, Thanks, I only quickchecked audacity quite a while ago…still using Peak…I guess you insert it into ardour through jack, right? It is definitely a great solution for master buses for me, I´ll get to it…my old pen will do the rest…
…even though I´m trying out the LAPSDA plugs listed in this site and I´m kind of astonished by some of them… they do a great job without demanding half of my CPU…Still to find an alternative for sound restoration in the LAPSDA world, but it´s only been a few days and getting better.

No, I use this little LADSPA plugin (http://www.audacityteam.org/vst/) which is placed in my LADSPA folder and can load the VSTs. As far as I understand you can load VSTs with every app that can use LADSPA.

But you’re right: the LADSPA plugins are really good (for the most part). I only use VSTs for amp simulation – that is the one thing where LADSPA hans’t got anything useful.

Thanks jan, you´ve been a great help. The VST bridge is working in my laptop, with a simple GUI for the plugs, but loading and operating plugs that DP 5 complains about in the laptop, a laptop that new Logic 8 doesn´t consider to be powerful enough to even load.
Already got it to sync to jadeo video player through jack as well.
This soft is soon going to be installed in one of the G5s with a little more complex system to check it with an MCU and extenders, some heavy sound for video work, PoCo plugs…
I still have to sort out OMF/EDL/…for our workflow but I´m very impressed until now.

Great that I could be of any help. Seems you get some serious work done with Ardour.

By the way, there is a way to use Audio Units, too. It is described in this thread. Sounds like a cool way to use AU Lab as an FX rack. Didn’ try it myself but it should work.

You´ve been helpful.About the serious job being done in ardour…jaja, not yet…jan…not quite yet… although I´m willing to say so in a while and have already made my studio partner go quite nuts, which is serius, considering how chilled he is as a regular basis … I installed ardour 2.5 in a G5 last night and had quite a bit of trouble I´ll list here:

I had to disable all VSTs and AUs to get ardour to load for the first time
Keybindings didn´t make it. Got an error saying there´s none.
Not a clue of how to get the MCU or extenders to run.

I´ll keep messing around and listing my experiences here. I´m trying the IRC channel, but I´ve never used irc in the past, nobody seems to answer. I log in and post in the bottom ¿Am I doing it right?.

I didn’t try 2.5 yet, but the previous version (on X11) is running fine, although it sometimes starts slowly, but that must be my hardware (iBook G4).