I have posted several times about my problems with Ardour on Ubuntu 13.04. Sincere help has been given, for which I am grateful.
The problem which remains, however, is that it is impossible to connect my MIDI controller to the softsynth. This means that Ardour is of limited use to me.
Therefore I propose to cancel my subscription and use a program which I know will work.
Please try to dissuade me. I believe in Linux and all he stands for, and my hair is grey already.
The change will involve using W***ndows.
Hi,
I fully understand that things can be very frustrating with a new and different OS but I have to be honest I’ve seen a few of these types of threads over the years and I don’t understand the rationale of expecting the developers who have worked hard on a phenomenal app to all come running to ‘dissuade’ you or you will withdraw funding like some kind of OS hostage blackmail. Have you inquired about the issue on IRC? Are you aware the lead developer of Ardour is currently unavailable for a short time and will return soon? Have you submitted a proper Mantis bug report? Did you test your hardware with Ardour before subscribing?
I don’t think there is anyone on this forum who has not experienced a technical issue or had to wait for a bug to get fixed or a feature to be included at one time or another. With projects like Ardour it is extremely important to understand that this is a completely different paradigm than other platforms and that the interaction between user and developer is quite unique and things may not happen on your timetable but proper bug and issue reports are taken seriously and if you are willing to be patient and take the longview you will usually get an issue resolved and be pleasantly surprised at what ingenious additional surprises the developers can come up with.
You are well within your rights to ask for features and assistance in Ardour especially if you have been generous enough to subscribe, but IMHO this ‘fix-it-or-I-walk’ attitude sucks. I assume you tried and evaluated Ardour before subscribing? You are and have always been free to choose Ardour/Linux or not, you have also been free to subscribe or unsubscribe so is the hostage drama really necessary?
I think you should just use what works best for you - whichever OS you choose and whether you choose a free (or low cost, donationware etc) application or a commercial alternative (on any OS), at the end of it all you just accept a different set of compromises in order to do what you need to do.
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I know my attitude sucks, is childish and deserves a slap in the face. I have not inquired about the issue on IRC because I do not know what that means. I have just submitted a bug report.
About a year ago I spent a while trying to to get music production going on Linux, but stopped after being told ‘Go play somewhere else’ once too often. I was encouraged to try again when I tried the version of Ardour in the Ubuntu repository and the audio channel worked!
I then got the tarball of Ardour 3.5, and persuaded some kind man to provide me with 4 line installation instructions.
I have spent weeks on this problem and have broken it down to the version in the bug report. GMaq, I am truly sorry for my presentation but it got your attention.
Just a quick question to you Loz56. What is your problem and what have you tried so far that did not fix it ?
tried a2midid -e in a terminal to make your midi device visible to ardour/jack-midi instead of just alsa-.midi ?
@Loz56 In the footer below there is a link to the #ardour channel at irc.freenode.org (IRC) which will give you an irc web page where you can discuss your issues with usually around 100 other ardour users/developers and get valuable hints and suggestions that might solve your problem unless you already made up your mind and switching platform
I have submitted my fair share of bug reports on ardour over the years. The ones that were solved quickly were the ones where I actively participated in the fault-finding and feedback.
Doing what you did is the same as calling for roadside assistance, and cancelling your membership if the tow truck does not come quick enough…
~Ardour Dev’s have clearly stated that the next few releases of ardour will deal with the midi bugs that are present, so if you hang tight until the next release, then possibly that will be fixed in the next release.
also as said, ardour dev’s and other people in the irc can help you, the dev;s in particular dont like to deal with issues here as it can take too much of there time having to go back and forward. Help is much quicker and easier in the IRC chat since its real time and they can just type something and wait for a response. not like here where you have to read through replies, then review a post then post it, then check back for a response.
I also have issues with midi work in ardour which the last i checked were still present. so i dont do any midi work unless its version 3 though even in 3 its still buggy.
Just like most stuff in software, the latest and most up to date is not the best. (and why i dont run ubuntu 13.04 or 13.10 )
ahellquist, your suggestions look great. Resulted in in :
a2midid: command not found
E: Unable to locate package a2midid
It is simply the fact that my MIDI controller keyboard is invisible to Ardour that is the problem. The softsynths will produce sounds from the piano roll keyboard but Ardour offers no way to connect the controller. In my ignorance it has taken me weeks to refine the question to the above statement.
Thanks, everyone.
It is called a2jmidid.
dbra, a2jmidid works fine! Synth1 sings away! My usual reference is Calf Organ. Click on that and the entire Ardour program vanishes instantly!
Calf plugins aren’t that fine… I don’t use them anymore. Poor performance and sound. As a soft-synth I only use Yoshimi (which is an RT-capable fork of ZynAddSubFX). Otherwise I only use analogue hardware-synths. (they really sound better…)
Stable and well sounding plugins are: Invada (except for the reverb which often crashes), TAP, CAPS (or C* whatever…).
TAL Noisemaker sounds very fine, but crashes often here. Maybe they run better in KXStudio. (I use Fedora with Planet CCRMA)
Loz56: Your keyboard problem is not Ardour per se, but due to a lack of knowledge of how midi works on Linux which is unfortunately, a bit messy. There are 2 ways to use midi, Alsa midi and Jack midi. Jack midi is newer and superior (less jitter). However, USB midi devices are handled by Alsa midi and firewire as Jack midi (due to using different drivers). The a2jmidid program is allows Alsa midi connections to be visible to Jack midi, thus allowing interconnections between Alsa and Jack midi.
In addition since you are using Ubuntu I strongly suggest added the kxstudio ppa’s since kxstudio repos have a large amount of linux audio software precompiled, including a2jmidid. Vanilla Ubuntu is rather poor for professional audio. By the way, properly built Calf plugins work in fine in my experience, e.g. AVLinux versions which I use regularly. I suspect kxstudio’s version would also work well.
Thanks, Edward and dbra. Edward’s explanation of the relation between Alsa Midi and Jack Midi, ahellquist’s suggestion to switch on a2j, dbra’s hint, all allow me to take up further suggestions regarding instruments.
What I wanted was to use Linux to continue to learn subtractive synth programming. I can do that now.