[LAU] Ardour mono/stereo separation -- was Re: FOSS DAW recommendations

[David Kastrup]

Fons Adriaensen <fons-dDzkXPnfpdzhj6bIAHgUAw at public.gmane.org> writes:

> On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 07:42:19AM +0100, Robin Gareus wrote:
>  
>> Many users want the other way: Combine a two mono tracks to a stereo
>> track for shared editing or FX (and there's likewise no simple way to
>> do that in the editor alone, the tracks need to be a bounced).
>> Track-groups are the preferred way for this for edit operations.
>> subgroup-busses for FX.
>
> The basic reason why solving this sort of problem requires some
> non-trivial manipulations is Ardour's one-to-one mapping of editor
> tracks and mixer strips.  Which of course simplifies a lot of things,
> it's not there without reason.

You cannot seamlessly exchange the plugins and other structure between
mono and stereo strips and they are also part of the track.

> A simple solution would be to have a routing option between the track
> outputs and strip inputs. Default would be one-to-one, but then at least
> you can override it if you need to (and accept the consequences).

Well, the balance control is sort of a routing option.  Personally I
think it would already help a lot if the strip output of stereo strips
could be assigned individually instead just to consecutive channel
pairs.

> This would also provide a simple solution to a requirement I face all
> the time: routing a recorded track to more than one strip.

Well, you can route it to a bus and from there to several strips.

> And having the bare track outputs available on Jack outputs would
> facilitate using an external (HW or SW) mixer.

Again, should work with a bus.  I admit not having tried it.

-- 
David Kastrup