30 Aug
2006
30 Aug
'06
2:04 a.m.
Hello folks ...
I've just started working once again on a mix project, after a long
break over the summer, and am encountering a problem I don't recall
seeing before.
When I try to add a bus to the session ("Session -> Add Track/Bus"), it
causes Ardour to crash (many thanks to the Ardour developers for adding
intelligent crash recovery! I haven't lost any real work thanks to that.)
I can add a "track" without any problem, but what I'm after here is a
"bus".
I _think_ I'm doing this right. The project presently has 16 tracks,
and the master bus, and I want to add a bus to use to connect post-fader
sends from selected tracks, as an effects bus (with the effect inserted
as a pre-fader plugin on the bus). I already have a (not connected)
post-fader send on one of my tracks, ready to connect to the bus I'm
trying to create.
The system is Slackware-10.2 (with a customized kernel, and upgrades
as released by Slackware), on an AMD Athlon64 (running in 32-bit mode)
with 2GB RAM (no swap used as yet, so I'm not expecting lack of memory to
be a problem). I've been running Ardour-0.99.2, but when I encountered
this problem I upgraded to Ardour-0.99.3 to see if the upgrade would
resolve the problem (it didn't). Jack is jack-0.100.0 (hrmmm... I see
new versions of that are available, but it doesn't seem to me as though
Jack would be the culprit here; I'll upgrade if it's believed I should,
though ...)
Anyone have any ideas? Feel free to point me to documentation I should
have found (I've already checked the Ardour online manual and "how do
I..." forum, but it is of course possible that I missed something that
should have jumped out at me), or to tell me there's a better way to get
what I'm after (the equivalent of a post-fader "aux" send and return on
a hardware mixer).
It occurs to me that I can add a stereo track, insert (pre-fader)
the plugin I want, connect its output to the master track, and set it
to record-enable (all tracks for the project are already recorded,
so that won't interfere), and connect the other track sends I want
to it. It feels like a work-around, but it might at least permit me to
continue ... (comments on this would be appreciated ...)
Thanks in advance for any help ...
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)alcor.concordia.ca
Major in Electroacoustic Studies Concordia University
Faculty of Fine Arts / Music Department Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------
30 Aug
30 Aug
11:51 p.m.
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Sylvain Robitaille schrieb:
When I try to add a bus to the session ("Session
-> Add Track/Bus"), it
causes Ardour to crash (many thanks to the Ardour developers for adding
intelligent crash recovery! I haven't lost any real work thanks to that.)
I can add a "track" without any problem, but what I'm after here is a
"bus".
I _think_ I'm doing this right. The project presently has 16 tracks,
and the master bus, and I want to add a bus to use to connect post-fader
sends from selected tracks, as an effects bus (with the effect inserted
as a pre-fader plugin on the bus). I already have a (not connected)
post-fader send on one of my tracks, ready to connect to the bus I'm
trying to create.
Hello Sylvain,
I don't have any idea why it is crashing off my head now, but -- to
get more infos -- just a few questions / suggestions....
1) have you the "automatically connect new tracks/busses" switch on?
try to set it to off, so you can see if its just the adding of
the bus or the connections that crash ardour.
2) does the crash happen as well, if you use a smaller project
(e.g. only the master bus or just one track)?
3) why are you trying to use a post fader send? why don't you just
connect the output of your track(s) to the new bus besides the
master bus, add your plugin on the bus pre or post fader and
connect the output of the bus to whatever you like. I'm doing
the latter frequently, but I must confess, I never used a
send ;-)
hope this helps,
Hermann Vosseler
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31 Aug
31 Aug
12:55 a.m.
On 8/30/06, Ichthyostega <prg(a)ichthyostega.de> wrote:
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Sylvain Robitaille schrieb:
> When I try to add a bus to the session ("Session -> Add Track/Bus"),
it
> causes Ardour to crash
Do you have JACK set to playback only? If I recall, I had this problem
with saved sessions. A new session would work, I think, but once I
saved it and opened it again, I couldn't add a bus if JACK was set to
playback only. If you set JACK to full duplex the problem should go
away. This bug was first reported on MANTIS (Bug 0000802) on 12-20-04
and it looks like somebody figured out how to get around it on
11-23-05. I guess not a lot of people run Ardour with JACK on playback
only.
-spencer
1:58 a.m.
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Ichthyostega wrote:
1) have you the "automatically connect new
tracks/busses" switch on?
try to set it to off, so you can see if its just the adding of
the bus or the connections that crash ardour.
Hrmmm.... I don't see a single such switch, but rather four switches:
- Auto-connect new track inputs to hardware
- Auto-connect new track outputs to master bus
- Auto-connect new track outputs to hardware
- Manually connect new track outputs
If these are not what you meant, I must be looking in the wrong place.
Of those, the first was selected, though I've just tried now with it
deselected, but no change in behaviour.
2) does the crash happen as well, if you use a smaller
project
(e.g. only the master bus or just one track)?
Started a new empty session for testing:
- just the master bus, Add a new bus: no problem
- add 1 track, then add a new bus: no problem
- add 8 tracks, then add a new bus: no problem
- add 8 more tracks, then add a new bus: no problem
Hrmmm... perhaps the difference here is that I'm working with empty
tracks, while in my real project I have a little over an hour's worth
of material to mix?
I'm trying importing a similar number of tracks with as much audio from
another (already completed) project. I'll see if it's still ok with that,
or if it crashes again.
Assuming similar behaviour once the imported tracks contain more than
N megabytes of data, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can
tune my system so that I can add new busses to a project with this much
audio to mix?
Update: the import completed as I was typing; I added a new bus with
no problem. Tried again with the project I'm working on, but it crashes
still. :-( So: Ok with new project, but crashes if I try to add a new
bus to this particular existing project ...
There must be something about the settings I have for this project.
If anyone can suggest what I should be looking for, I would greatly
appreciate it. I really don't want to have to start over every time I
realize I need a new aux bus ...
3) why are you trying to use a post fader send?
It's analogous to the post-fader send on a hardware mixer, which is
what I'm used to working with. If I could just send all 16 tracks out
as analog audio to a hardware mixer, and mix that to 2-track,, I would
be much more comfortable, and would know exactly how to get signals
to any effects and back. That would relegate Ardour to being "just"
a multi-track "tape" machine, though, and it would be a shame to not
use the features built into the software.
why don't you just connect the output of your
track(s) to the new
bus besides the master bus, add your plugin on the bus pre or post
fader and connect the output of the bus to whatever you like.
Two reasons:
1. I want to be able to adjust the relative (post-fader) levels of the
tracks going to the aux bus separately from the mix going to the
main bus. For example, if I want less of one track going to the
aux bus than another track, but I don't want to change the relative
balance between the two "dry" signals going to the main mix.
2. I'm unable to add a new bus at all, as doing so crashes the software,
so post-fader send, or track output or not, I can't get the signals
to an alternate bus.
I'm doing the latter frequently, but I must
confess, I never used a
send ;-)
I started mixing many years ago, on hardware mixers, and have spent most
of my time working with audio in the analog domain. Mixing on a computer
is still new to me, and I want to be able to accomplish the same results
I can get on an analog mixer, while still benefitting from the features
of the DAW software. I'm not trying to do something Ardour _can't_ do,
but it may be that I'm trying to do it "wrong".
Thanks for your suggestions. At the very least, it inspired me to gather
additional data about the problem.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)alcor.concordia.ca
Major in Electroacoustic Studies Concordia University
Faculty of Fine Arts / Music Department Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------
6:06 p.m.
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I understand, you want to set different send gains. Seems that
your
approach is just right and the best way to achieve this.
hope this helps
Cheers,
Hermann Vosseler
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Ichthyostega wrote:
Sylvain Robitaille schrieb:
1) have you the "automatically connect new
tracks/busses" switch on?
Hrmmm.... I don't see a single such switch, but
rather four switches:
you are right, it was just lazy wording.
This switches could have caused the problem, if ardour tries to
automatically make connetctions wich are impossible. But, as you
wrote, this seems not to be the problem.
Hrmmm... perhaps the difference here is that I'm
working with empty
tracks, while in my real project I have a little over an hour's worth
of material to mix?
I doubt this could be the problem. Normally, it doesn't
make any difference
how much material you have on your tracks.
But -- I had just some wired problem last week: I had a project with about
50 tracks and many small takes (playback/overdubb), basically, I had more
then 800 takes. Ardour has the "bad habbit" of opening each and every take
forehandedly (Ardour-2 will have a much more clever file handling and won't
suffer from this problem). So, at some point I got "too many open files"-
messages on the console and shortly afterwards Ardour crashed. The resolution
of the problem was, to start ardour from a terminal window and issue the
following command prior to starting ardour at this terminal:
ulimit -n 2048
There is another limitation: The maximum length of a track is limited by
the number range of some internal counter variable. But this limitation
kicks in only after several hours. Some weeks ago, I ran into this limitation,
as I tried to integrate all takes of a large pipe organ recording project into
one timeline, to facilate cutting. At 96kHz, I wasn't able to move the
playback cursor to any point byond about 11 hours 30 minutes. :-)
But I don't think this is your problem, I just noted it for sake of completeness..
There must be something about the settings I have for this project.
If anyone can suggest what I should be looking for, I would greatly
appreciate it. I really don't want to have to start over every time I
realize I need a new aux bus ...
Normally, this shouldn't be necessary. You can
make real huge sessions
with lots of wildly interconnected busses and ardour handles everything
well, including the latency.
Just intuitively, I would suspect something at the input/output-configuration
of some of your tracks to be messed up. (e.g. if you have a stereo track, but
by accident removed one of its output connection points)
Just another aproach to try:
- Use a *copy* of your session file (a so called "snapshot"). I.e. if
your session has the name "mysession.ardour", then copy it to a new
file (e.g.) "test.ardour" and open this file with ardour. This ensures
that you don't loose your original session...
- then start to *strip down* the copy, maybe at some point the problem
goes away:
- test 1: select all takes on all tracks and remove them. Select all
regions in the regions list on the right and remove them too. Save
your snapshot, then try to add you bus....
- test 2: if this doesn't help, try to remove whole tracks (in the
"visual" menu of every track there is a option "remove track"
3) why are you
trying to use a post fader send?
It's analogous to the post-fader send on a
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6:10 p.m.
On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 22:06 +0200, Ichthyostega wrote:
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The problem is not anything you are doing, the problem is a bug in
Ardour. Did you get a GDB backtrace of the crash and submit it to Paul?
Lee
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Ichthyostega wrote:
Sylvain Robitaille schrieb:
1) have you the "automatically connect new
tracks/busses" switch on?
Hrmmm.... I don't see a single such switch,
but rather four switches:
you are right, it was just lazy wording.
This switches could have caused the problem, if ardour tries to
automatically make connetctions wich are impossible. But, as you
wrote, this seems not to be the problem.
6:45 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re:Ardour: trying to add a "bus" causes a crash?
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Lee Revell wrote:
Did you get a GDB backtrace of the crash and submit it
to Paul?
No. I'm not sure if Paul is on this mailing list, but if he is, knowing
now that this is a documented problem with a documented workaround, (see
Message-ID: <b9ac938d0608301955i26b122b9pdc0bbd8d83db3e5b(a)mail.gmail.com>
by Spencer Russell for details), I'm not sure there's value in doing so
unless he specifically wants to see the stack trace. If so, I'm certain
that I can duplicate the problem suffiently to produce a core file to
get a stack trace from.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)alcor.concordia.ca
Major in Electroacoustic Studies Concordia University
Faculty of Fine Arts / Music Department Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------
8:24 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re:Ardour: trying to add a "bus" causes a crash?
Just a quick followup to my own message ...
On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, Sylvain Robitaille wrote:
... I'm not sure if Paul is on this mailing list,
...
Silly me ... a quick search through messages received from the mailing
list confirm that he is, or at least was as recently as three days ago ...
:-)
--
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Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)alcor.concordia.ca
Major in Electroacoustic Studies Concordia University
Faculty of Fine Arts / Music Department Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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participants (4)
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Sylvain Robitaille