On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 8:08 PM, jonetsu <jonetsu@teksavvy.com> wrote:

Thanks to everyone who shared tips on how to use Ardour. I see that up
to now I haven't used much of it really and the recent tips on hardware
monitoring are great and I'm still experimenting.

At the beginning of a new session I've added a hardware monitor track
with 4 outputs PCMs 1 to 4. I'm still not doing much with it at the
moment and noticed that in the mixer window there's a fader for it
along with a space at the bottom containing 4 green dots numbered 0 to
3. When dragging them in the square space the mix would slightly move
sideways. That seems useful. But what about the orange squares
located at each corner of the space ? They also can be moved but seem
to change nothing - what is their purpose ?

First of all, it is absolutely critical when asking questions about Ardour that you specify which version you are using, since Ardour2 and Ardour3 differ in many critical and common areas.

In your particular case, its fairly clear what is going on - you are using Ardour2 and have created a 4 channel monitor/control out bus. This is a very specialized configuration that requires something other than the conventional panners than would be seen if you had a 1 or 2 channel monitor/control out bus. In Ardour2, its also means that you've ended up with a fairly useless 2D panner.

You should not configure your monitor out/control out bus in this way. Make it a conventional 2 channel bus, and things will work better and be more understandable. Multichannel (>2) monitor and master busses are generally reserved in Ardour for ambisonics, which I doubt that you're using.

--p