M-Audio Fast Track Pro

I’m totally new to Ardour and can not get my m-audio fast track pro to function. The audio set up reflects the following: Driver: ALSA and Interface:ALC262 Analog. The only other choice for interface USB Audio #1. I’m currently running Ubuntu 9.10. Are there any drivers I should have loaded? Help!!!

This device should work out of the box for you, despite it will only function @ 16 bit mode and only using the 2 analog inputs in the front. If you install qjackctl, you will be able to choose the right inputs/outputs in Fast Track Pro. I wrote a quite nice guide for it in my blog to make it run @ 24 bit, I have not tested the digital inputs/outputs and other functions but it works well under 24 bit for me with analog ins.

IF YOU WANT/NEED 24 BIT MODE YOU WILL HAVE TO:

  1. download, patch and compile new RT-kernel
  2. do some quite tweaking to the system
  3. use two kernels in your system, generic for everyday use and rt just for audio work with this specific device.

The payoff is worth it, better quality, but if you are just going to do demos or “play” around without getting into heavy mixing where you don’t care much about headroom, I strongly advice to not do all this then… 16 bit will do.

My guide is located here: any questions or comments just post them there:

http://www.joegiampaoli.com/blog/?p=462

NOTE: This device can be quite noisy if you don’t set your recording levels properly, especially if you have another device with preamp in front of it in the chain. I have a Boss GT-8 Guitar FX Pedal Board recording into it (nice amp, mic and environment simulations), so what I do is I send my signal level the hottest possible from GT-8 into the Fast Track Pro and roll the input level in FTP to the lowest, if it’s still too hot I’ll use the pad buttons, this is the best way to prevent any hiss or hum in the recording line and lets you record descent levels without taking too much of the headroom in ardour and with 24 bit mode in FTP I have a bit more headroom to work with.

Good Luck!

Hey joegiampaoli ! I wanna ask you something about your GT-8 and the M-audio fast track pro…
I own a M-ad ftp and i want to buy a boss gt-8 /gt-10 or a line 6 HD400 to record guitar throught m-ad to my computer and be able to use it live!
Is it necessary to buy a preamp for pedalboards?! i’m a noob in this recording stuff, and i wanna record piano,drums(Midi) voice(AKG C-3000B)
Also… i have a Boss me-20 , and i tried to connect it directly into the m-ad… but i have to use the mono output from the boss me-20 into the m-ad and the guitar into de boss… does it change anything if i have connected two monitors into the m-ad?
thank you!

Hello pedrorythm, usually you don’t need a preamp for a pedalboard like the GT series or the Line 6, they are usually record ready, but if you connect the pedalboard to the Fast Track Pro (which is a preamp) you should be fine for recording, it’s all pretty balanced. I can see that the BOSS ME-20 also has two outputs just like my GT-8, using both will give you a stereo sound. So if I understand your question, you mean what happens if you connect both outputs from the ME-20 to the two inputs of the Fast Track pro? Ok, if that’s the question here it goes:

You will achieve a different sound, but only in the sense of some FX like chorus, delays and reverbs. Thing is that for recording it’s best to record a signal dry (or as dry as possible) without any FX, just maybe OD/Distortions, wahs, phaser, vibrato, etc. The rest you can add them up on your computer via a BUS, especially a Stereo Bus where you will be placing these FX, because some of them work better in stereo, such as reverb and chorus. So you would connect your recorded guitar inside ardour which would be a mono track (only one input) to a stereo bus which would have the reverb, chorus, delay, etc. and that to your master. Then you will hear the signal “spread” in the stereo mix. You can record you guitar in stereo with the FX from your pedalboard, but you have to know what you are doing, because if you overdo/underdo an FX you will have to record the whole track again, and you will have to record into a stero track or two separate mono tracks connected to each input of the Fast track Pro, the issue here is that mixing also becomes a bit of a hassle. So in my opinion it would be best to do it as I explain first, record in mono and add FX in stereo, then its easy to change the FX if necessary and the mixing will be easier.

Hope that explains or clears things up.

Joe