[LAU] Ardour: fixing errors in a recorded track (was: DAW usability)

[Hein Zelle]

Julien Claassen wrote:

> I thought the point was clear and now we could head on to acutally BEING 
> PRODUCTIVE and REASONABLE! :-)

I'll try and give it a start, with a different topic.  I have some 
questions on using ardour, which I've only partially solved after 
reading the manual.  I'd like to hear how people tackle this, step by 
step, possibly including what to click and how.


Problem 1:  I've just recorded a single track. It's mostly OK, but 
there's a piece where I goofed up, or the microphone got touched and 
crackled, or something similar.

Solution:  record another (partial) take, and copy a piece of the second 
take on top of the first one.  Using crossfades I guess, to hide the 
transitions.

Questions:

- should I do this using a new playlist, or should I just record a new 
region on top of the old recording?  Or should I use a completely new 
track?  (I'm guessing not the last option).

- If I _do_ have the 2 takes in 2 different tracks (both visible below 
eachother),  I want to select a region in the second track, and copy it 
over the first one, keeping the time position the same.  How do I do 
this?  I've read about something like control-click-drag in the manual, 
but I can't get it to work.  Copy-paste works, but positions the 
selection at the beginning of the other track.

- If I record the second take in a new playlist, how do I proceed to do 
this then?

- And how to do it if I forgot to make a new playlist, and just use 
punch-in recording to re-record a small section?


Problem 2:

after recording, I want to either play or export my recording.  Ardour 
doesn't stop at the end of the recording by itself.  At one point, I 
suddenly had an "end" marker where it would stop and return to the 
beginning.  How do I get that marker?  How do I remove it again?


Problem 3:

export project to audio file.  Sometimes this gives me an empty audio 
file (no signal) of the correct length.  I suspect this has to do with 
selecting tracks before exporting, but I would expect "export project" 
to not care about that.  Any ideas what I may be doing wrong there?


Problem 4:

coupling ardour and rosegarden together for midi accompaniment.  This 
works fine with rosegarden in "slave" mode, I can control 
start/stop/record from either program.  However, they don't copy 
eachothers settings for beats-per-minute and time signature.  Is it 
possible to automatically carry that information over from one program 
to the other?


This probably belongs on an ardour mailing list somewhere, if so please 
let me know and I'll repost it.  I'm interested in hearing people's 
methods to solving such things, though.  Not being an audio-expert I'm 
rather baffled by all the features and terminology used in 
ardour/rosegarden/muse/etc, it seems like you're expected to already 
know what everything means and how it's supposed to be used.


Kind regards and thanks for any input,
	Hein Zelle