Re: [linux-audio-user] Mastering; Rezound, fir filter, digital clipping

--- Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote: Right on. However, ecasound is a nondestructive DAW right? Please tolerate my elaborations, I know some of us understand mastering but some of us don't. I can't tell you all the reasons for why a destructive wav editor is the correct solution for mastering. But I can provide one simple example. Consider the heads and tails of a mix. These must be eliminated. Not just in representation i.e. trimming an ardour peak file start and stop point. But they can't exist at all. They've got to be destroyed. This is analogous to the old razor blade tape cutting days where the multitrack mixes were dumped to two track tape and the two track tape was cut and spliced to adjust timing between songs. Multitrack nondestructive DAWs aren't designed for this task. Timing between songs is one part of the mastering engineers responsibilities. Because wav editors are destructive, their final product can be dumped onto the filesystem and then any CD burning application can be used to order and time the song list. Ardour has an incomplete feature set for exporting CD markers. This is a great thing for burning rough mixes to CD. But it doesn't fulfill the requirements of a robust mastering solution. OK, to venture off topic and risk greying the lines. A DAW can be the ultimate mastering environment. But nobody has developed the solution and many engineers don't understand and reject the notion. Daniel James accurately anticipate this--if I interpreted his comment correctly. Consider inserting JAMin in its full implementation post Ardour stereo buss. This is an awesome prospect for many reasons. However it has a glaring weakness. How to put 10 multitrack songs on the time line and perform all the tedious mastering tasks including the timing between songs which I mentioned above. This is possible with the Ardour chunks. A chunk in Ardour as I described but isn't implemented or working can represent many tracks. The chunk appears as one track. Chunks can be copied and pasted anywhere. Those tracks within a chunk can have any start and stop point. This type of Ardour chunk makes two things possible; A the ultimate song arrangement interface and B the ultimate mastering interface. B is contingent on being able to open arbitrary chunks in a common session. AFAIK, there is no equivalent, not in protools, digital performer, tdm, etc. Imagine that the ardour master-chunk.session represents 10 songs with 24 tracks in each. :) That's 240 tracks where all automation and DSP is in tact to the multitrack layer and it's computationaly no more expensive than one twenty four track session. Maybe my old man was right and I'm just a turd tossing tree dweller but I suspect this environment would do for the surgical treatment of audio the equivalent of what radiation therapy has done to the practice of blood letting with leeches. Ah what the hell, I need more coffee. ron "i love leeches, but only for fishing" parker __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com