Hello, I thought I'd sign up for the list considering i've been a very proud ardour user for some time now and am looking to get up to my neck in audio software development. First, let me tell you about my current activities. I'm a student at IUPUI, where I'm starting a student radio station. However, we have an extremely tight budget for our baby steps, which is one of the reasons I'm exploring all the linux software (aside from its incredible flexibility). So... starting a radio station, also trying to start a record label, and zine for my friends bands, record albums, etc... Also trying to do Computer Science so I can learn about recursive functions and all the math jibber jabber. Would love to pursue software radio some day. Blah blah blah... Secondly, thank you developers for writing ardour. It has been incredibly useful. We've recorded a total of 2 albums using ardour, nothing magnificent, but its a start. It feels great to be taking steps away from commercial software. Now that I've overly introduced myself, I have a couple questions. For the radio station, we need an on-air console. However, just today I discovered a cheaper solution to the typical $10,000 audio consoles: control surfaces. I see from the site that ardour plans to work with the mackie control surface, is there any existing functionality with any control surfaces? If so, I could purchase a control surface for the station, use it with ardour and solve the mixing console problem? Would cueing be a possibility this way? Can ardour be expanded and used for broadcast applications in addition to its already outstanding production capabilities? I'd be happy to test this stuff out.

Amazingly, almost all the stations technical requirements can be satisfied using linux software. Been experimenting with http://livesupport.campware.org for our automation software. Using ardour and audacity for production. JAMIN as our compressor for mastering and as final element in our signal path before it hits the tower. JACK as the all purpose audio routing mechanism. Darkice and icecast for streaming. Go Linux! Finally, I noticed that the future for ardour's license looks like it might be closed-source. Is this true? I understand that we all have to make money, I just wondered if somebody could clarify this.

Thanks! Apologies for rambling and the flurry of questions, hope to hear back from you. - Ben