Hey All
Im new around here but have been running ardour for about a year on my dirty old bone of a laptop with linux, and had no real issues figuring it all out with the jack settings and running various LV2 plugs, and even bought the package from linux dsp, which are awesome to say the least. But I never even considered doing a production on it, because well, I have been using the same system since about 2004 and I am fast and self assured on that system.
Rewind to last week. I inherit a powerMac g5 dual core thingy, and I decide to give it a go to mix my last production with ardour, and I am losing my mind with all the problems that are arising. Ive been lurking on the net reading all kinds of documentation on the software, and every user manual that I can lay my eyes on, but I tell ya, its a very hard process.
First off. Im mixing, and I get stutters and stops even with what in my opinion is not a very heavy plugin load. I should mention that Im using Mixbus by the way. The version of jack control for mac osx is a nightmare. I cant set up anywhere near as much as I could in qjack, and well If I wanna record a small part in a project after the mix starts, I can just forget about it, because my wrestling with the disk buffers and dsp overload has me occupied enough as it is.
So run my butt down to the corner convenience store for 4 gigs more of memory, which means that this machine now has 5 gigs of processing power and 6 gigs of memory and it cant keep up with my garbage picked windumb computer that is running on 1/3 of the power. This cant be possible. I must be missing something here. Ok, one weak link is that Im using my old Zoom h4 as a usb sound card, but windumb swallowed it like a cold beer on a saturday night.
So i crank the buffers up to 2040, and it goes for a while, then sppppuuurrrttt. The nightmare starts again. Restart jack. restart mixbus…reconnect the H4. ok , but for how long? maybe an hour, maybe half of a song. Not a very nice mixing situation. at least its my own project, because a customer would shoot me on the spot when they would have to witness such numbnuttery.
I know this sounds more like venting than looking for solutions, but I really want to give this a go, because the mixes that I did squeeze out of this metal monstrosity whoop a elephants booty with Rob Halfords studded belt. I know I could freeze he tracks and all that jazz, but just for fun, I set up a project to record 4 tracks of a acoustic song that fits my mood called “motherfu+#er” and had the buffer settings at 2040 and well, it went ok for a little while, then bluuuuurt. tracks recorded full of distortion and jitter. So latency settings down, no jitter, but then coming in way too late. I know I know. change the latency settings in jack, which I cant find unless I set up the device over mixbus, but then it wont let me change the settings. So I tried making it an appropriate device. no dice. This cant be right whats going on here.
A word on the mac itself. Its totally running well with other applications, Ive thrown heavy Illustrator files at it, and it gobbled the bytes up with vigor.
Any advice?
Blow myself up to put myself outta my misery? Or Go use my windumb system? I think id rather blow myself up.
Cheers
Paul