how do i use the sends?

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

hello,
i’m a fairly experienced user of computer daws, including protools, the most obvious inspiration for ardour. however, i cannot work this out: i tried both ardour 1 and 2. how do i make a send on a channel that sends some of its signal to a bus, the amount of which is determined by a slider? i tried all manner of ins and outs on the input/output dialogs of both the channel i want to send from and the bus i want to receive the signal. i just cannot make it work, can someone give me a walkthrough please, thanks! i tried looking in the manual and other forum posts without success.
i’m on os x 10.4.8 macbook and have audio coming in and out and recording without a problem.

#2

there’s no explanation in the manual.

sends are inactive when created. middle-click them in the mixer strip to toggle their active status. double click them to bring up the send GUI which will contain a fader to control the level.

major changes are planned for the send design post-2.0.

#3

Have you activated the send?

#4

hi sampo,
how do you mean?
left click “new send…” brings up the dialog.
i add an output: in1 of the bus i want to send to. but nothing arrives at the bus.
i add an input to the bus, that has the name of the send i want to use, but still no audio arrives at the bus.
at the moment i have nothing to compare my actions with - if i missed the bit in the manual or on the forum where this is explained then feel free to just point me there, thanks.

#5

hi paul,
thanks for the explaination, i got it working now. the activation thing wasn’t so obvious i guess.
can i ask while you’re here, is there an advantage for having to specify both a destination in the send, and an input source in the bus? i couldn’t think of one… but i don’t mean to be rude, i was just wondering.

#6

sends can go anywhere, not just a bus. it could go to an external JACK client, for example. you don’t need to specify it in both places at all. just set up the send with (say) 1 port (it gets the “right” number of ports when created, but you might want to change it), and connect that port to whatever you want. done.

at least, thats true for the time being.

#7

oh yeah, i see now it sets up the destination bus input automatically. i like how ardour can patch into other programs so easily, that’s very useful. anyway, well done for your efforts.

#8

Not just other software

The insert and/or sends can also address a pcm device, this allows useage of hardware effects, eq, dynamic processors e.t.c… (it’s a wonderful feature)

Allan K
sonofzev
Littlewolf Music
Melbourne Australia

#9

What should be added to Ardour2 is to automate send-levels.
You can set them fix but you cannot set automation as you can do for channel/bus-faders and plugins.

#10

This is true. Send automation is something that needs to be done. But, 2.0 will not include this feature.

While this might seem strange, there is a real reason for this. To fix this we need to do a major refactor of the send code which we will leave to after we get a stable release with current feature set.