So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Discuss your workplace, instruments, amps, and any other gear.

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DeRaaf
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

Just a little fun testing stuff. No Soundcheck was done before recording, put up some mics (2 x Behringer C2) for recording some vocals and the Yamaha Cx40, plugged in the Ibanez AS73 into the Katana connect via USB to the computer, and just recorded straight into Ardour.

Recordings where done at 96kHz, 128 Buffer, 2 jack periods. Was giving me 1.7ms latency. I think I can be happy with that? It's usable playing anyway.

Did a little editing with some really light EQ, panning and Limiting. It's a song that is been work on! Soo .......

https://soundcloud.com/user-840233560/s ... 2DvqBCuuJp

All seem to work except channels 3 & 4 on the UMC404HD don't pass any audio, they show up in the Jack interface (and PulseAudio), they pass audio on a Mac system ... must be doing something wrong.

Think I can get some decent results for not to much money.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

That was weird. Inputs 3 & 4 of the UMC404HD showed up on my Computer (both in Jack and in PulseAudio), could see the lights light up on the device on channel 3 & 4, but no audio.

My System OS:

Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS (kernel 5.13.0-9.1-liquorix-amd64)

After some digging around I went into AlsaMixer (terminal >$ alsamixer). To my surprise it seems that channels 3 & 4 are not set up "correct". I found this:

Image

Changed everything to show (I toggled CAPTURE on the "Mic Rear" channel (spacebar). Raised the volume to full):

Image

Seem to work now, but wouldn't call that plug and play.
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

DeRaaf wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 1:07 pm That was weird. Inputs 3 & 4 of the UMC404HD showed up on my Computer (both in Jack and in PulseAudio), could see the lights light up on the device on channel 3 & 4, but no audio.
[...]
After some digging around I went into AlsaMixer (terminal >$ alsamixer). To my surprise it seems that channels 3 & 4 are not set up "correct". [...]
Usually I can only get 4 channel in and out using Jack with the Behringer 404.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

I believe things work. Feels almost real.

Image

Getting decent numbers I believe:

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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

I got Ardour 6 working by uninstalling the flatpack found in the repo, and install an Ardour 6 backport (https://launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-ppa ... -backports).

It seems that the flatpack version of Ardour is to sandboxed to play in without to much trouble.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by Michael Willis »

DeRaaf wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:07 pm It seems that the flatpack version of Ardour is to sandboxed to play in without to much trouble.
Be aware that the flatpak has constraints on loading plugins. The short story is that apparently you can only load plugins installed as flatpaks.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

Michael Willis wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:27 pm
DeRaaf wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:07 pm It seems that the flatpack version of Ardour is to sandboxed to play in without to much trouble.
Be aware that the flatpak has constraints on loading plugins. The short story is that apparently you can only load plugins installed as flatpaks.
Thanks. Useful info.

I understand the need for things like flatpak, snaps and appimages, but they can make live really hard, especially when you don't even are aware using them (I'm looking at you Ubuntu!). I only seem to use programs that need full access to the system.
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

[more or less off-topic] Quote from https://discourse.ardour.org/t/current- ... x/105468/3
a flakpak application cannot access system-wide installed 3rd party software
Wouhar! What a nightmare. :mrgreen:
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

Decided to go for Ardour 6 for the time being. It being open source fits the challenge I set myself to keep my studio free and open. I already made an donation.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

DeRaaf wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:25 am Decided to go for Ardour 6 for the time being. It being open source fits the challenge I set myself to keep my studio free and open. I already made an donation.
Very good choice. Let us hear how your experiences with it are. You're mainly a live instrument player (guitar) I think. When I look at this excellent introduction video for Reaper then I think that Reaper is more for "in the box" musicians who want to speed up/slow down their audio fragments to match the BPM. Reaper is less orientated on live players.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

Reaper is really a full fledged DAW. Lot of friends of mine use it for live stuff. Reaper is cheap, and works under Windows, Mac and Linux. I'm the only one in my circles daring to go all GNU/Linux and opensource (if possible).
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

Post by DeRaaf »

Got 1 MIDI device connected. A M-Audio Keystation Mini32. Took me some time though.

Keyboard is just for having it laying around to play with. Seem to work in Ardour, all buttons seem functioning (Volume, Sustain, Octave). Velocity is working (not the nicest key feel).

Did have some trouble getting the thing to show up in Jack. I had to have Jack running and Carla open to see it appear as MIDI a2j (Alsa to Jack??) device.

Image

Found this video very useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACJ1suTVouw

Just a test with some quarter and eights notes to test the gridsnap in Ardour, never worked with gridsnapping https://soundcloud.com/user-840233560/m ... jikTnJv1vB

----->

Also connected my Zoom G3Xn via an insert port on the back of the UMC404HD. Needs an insert cable to work (Quarter inch Stereo plug to two Quarter inch mono plugs (https://missionengineering.com/what-is-a-trs-cable/ for people that don't already know).

I just have to plug in my guitar in channel 4 in front of the interface, and I have a whole new world to play with (Tuner, Effects for days, Drum machine, Looper, Wah Wah pedal, etc) without needing the plugins inside Ardour (which could be handy when recording CPU heavy things??).

Just a little example with the most distorted effect I could find. https://soundcloud.com/user-840233560/j ... bHvn5xjApt

Don't need to unplug or plug in effect pedals, can just let it sit there, works with a flick of a switch, can change things within arms reach and don't need to get out of my chair for it. Open Ardour, press spacebar and I'm recording.


My workspace behind my computer keyboard now looks like this:

Image

Feels like a really neat place to be, and every thing from Guitar amps, Drumkit, Guitar, MIDI keyboard, ready to go on just about 4 square meters.

Thus far a holiday well spend. On the thing I really dread, the e-drum kit.
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Re: So, I'm building the best possible home studio ... for my budget

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