[LAD] Half-OT: Fader mapping - was - Ardour MIDI tracer

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 02:48:55PM -0700, Len Ovens wrote:

> true and not. I just upgraded to the i5 because my older P4, while
> able to record audio, was on the edge of being able to deal with the
> number of tracks (9 or 10) I was using.

Strange. I've been using a P4 systen until a year ago.
It had no problems at all with 30 tracks or so, many of them
being multichannel. That was with Ardour2. With A3 it failed
on memory (512M), not on CPU load.

You are right that an i7 won't be better than an i5. My current home
system is an i5. It performs better than the i7 in the CdM studio,
which is from the same manufacturer and twice the price.

> Yes it is simple to keep notes. I would expect it is not a problem
> for anyone in this list (it is pretty hard to develop sw without
> some sort of organization skills). I have worked with artists who
> like to record their work who would find all they could do to make
> Ardour work, let alone worry about external gear too.

People should know their limits. And take their time to learn and
move those limits. There's always some effort involved in doing that.
And if they can't do something right, hire someone who can. That is
also an opportunity to learn.

> So long as
> they can get audio recorded they are happy, if a backing track
> sounds bad... lower it in the mix.... and blame it on the cheap
> equipment that is the best they can afford.

Some (not all) cheap equipment today is better than what most 
people could dream of 30 years ago. And a lot of great recording
was done in those days.

> That would be the best thing so long as you have the channels and
> equipment to do so. A lot of people have two channels with a builtin
> pre.... a pre that the litterature says is modeled on some super
> Britsh Console pre that all the hits used, but is in fact just
> another two pre on a chip deal with a tweak in the freq response to
> colour it.

Now *that* is true. All that 'vintage preamp' stuff is one great
hoax. Whatever 'sound' these things have amounts to a bit of EQ.
The same is true for tube preamps. Tubes may generate some nice
distortion when used in a power amp, more so if you throw in some
transformers. But at the millivolt levels you find in a preamp
they are as linear as it gets. 
 
> Someone has suggested the mic should have a pad, but if the
> impedance of the mic and pre are known, it is not hard to design and
> build a pad with a bypass switch... in fact two tens in a row would
> give twenty on need and cost pennys more after you already have the
> case and connectors. Or, it would be possible to have two pads of
> different impedance to use with more than one mic.

You need pads only for condenser mics. And since they already have
a preamp built-in they won't care much about impedance (as long as
it's reasonable). Three resistores of 10 cents each will do the trick.

Ciao,

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)