[LAU] Mono tracks to mono or stereo bus ? And sampling rate

[Joe Hartley]

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:33:44 -0500
"jonetsu at teksavvy.com" <jonetsu at teksavvy.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:18:32 -0500
> Joe Hartley <jh at brainiac.com> wrote:
> 
> > Your session runs at a sample rate set by JACK.  All the files that
> > have audio in them  have to match that value.  If the audio you want
> > to use has a higher sample rate, it will have to be re-sampled at the
> > lower rate for Ardour to use it in that session.
> 
> Sure.  Thing is, I sample, eg. I record in Ardour only.  So I only
> speak of Ardour.

As Paul mentioned, even if you're not running JACK, this is still non-trivial.

> 
> > If you want to have JACK and Ardour run at the higher sample rate,
> > assuming your interface supports it, you'd have to create a new
> > session and import the tracks.  The files with the audio that match
> > that new, higher rate will be imported with minimal processing, while
> > the other tracks will be up-sampled.
> 
> This "up-sample" as far as I understood from the course, does not exist
> in reality as far as the quality of audio is concerned.  

Of course not.  Resampling a 48k sample to 96k won't add fidelity, but it'll
get them to match the sample rate of the higher-quality tracks, which I
assumed already existed.

> > There is no way for Ardour to use files of a different sample rate
> > without them being resampled to the rate of the session, as
> > determined by JACK's setting.

This holds true for recording new tracks as well - you can't have a session
at 48k and then add tracks at 96k.

> Out of say 15 tracks, there would be 4 that need higher quality
> sampling because they are acoustic instruments.  But the 15 tracks,
> even the synths and synth drums, will take so many more megabytes of
> space, because the sampling rate is not set on a per track basis.

Storage is cheap.  

> Maybe sampling rates on a per-track basis does not make sense in FAWs
> in general.

With the timing involved, I can't see where multiple sample rates within a
session could ever work well.  

-- 
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh at brainiac.com
 Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa