LinuxMusicians

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pmOne thing that annoys me about Reaper is that there is no differentiating between mono and stereo tracks. I'm sure I could get used to that but to me it shows that Ardour is more focused on audio.

Ehh,, that's a great thing about reaper.. you can put whatever you want on a track.. audio (mono, stereo, quadrophonic, up to 64 channels), midi, videos, even bitmaps.. and you can route everything how you want..

skei wrote:and you can route everything how you want..

Same with Ardour, and I prefer the way Ardour does it. Just out of curiosity have you tried Ardour?

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 5:08 pmJust out of curiosity have you tried Ardour?

not much, i have to admit :-/
i tried quite intensely a few years ago, but it didn't "click" for me..
i'm old and have gathered some peculiar ways of working (bad habits), probably..

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pm The Reaper love is coming from people who produce electronic music.

Not me. Reaper's great for stuff other than that.

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pm I've been teaching basic Reaper over lockdown but I'm glad to get back to Ardour which could be due to the fact that I'm used to it. One thing that annoys me about Reaper is that there is no differentiating between mono and stereo tracks. I'm sure I could get used to that but to me it shows that Ardour is more focused on audio.

Reaper doesn't have mono tracks specifically; that's true. It defaults to 2 audio channels minimum. You can use a stereo track as mono if you set it up right. I don't even bother though, and I haven't had any problems as a result.

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 4:12 pmThe Reaper love is coming from people who produce electronic music.

lolwut? When I want to write electronic music I use LMMS. I use Reaper when I want to record live instruments. And I use it over Ardour for several reasons, but most importantly it's super easy and has every feature I need. I have yet to record any electronic music in Reaper.

skei wrote:i'm old and have gathered some peculiar ways of working (bad habits), probably..

I started recording on analogue equipment. That makes me old. So the way Ardour works makes sense to me.

If your first experiences of recording were with a computer then the concepts in Reaper may make just as much sense.

Ultimately it is your choice what you use and I wanted to put the case for Ardour as it has, in my opinion, the huge advantage of being free and open source.

bhilmers wrote:lolwut? When I want to write electronic music I use LMMS.

I was referring specifically to two vocal advocates of Reaper earlier in this thread.

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 7:09 pmI started recording on analogue equipment. That makes me old. So the way Ardour works makes sense to me. If your first experiences of recording were with a computer then the concepts in Reaper may make just as much sense.

Sure, I'm old too and my first "studio" was based around a Tascam Porta 05. Reaper and Ardour are functionally almost identical and they both follow traditional GUI design. I don't see how Ardour is any more "analogue" than Reaper and I'm happy to have my view changed.

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 7:22 pm

bhilmers wrote:lolwut? When I want to write electronic music I use LMMS.

I was referring specifically to two vocal advocates of Reaper earlier in this thread.

Got it, thanks for clarifying.

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 7:09 pm

skei wrote:i'm old and have gathered some peculiar ways of working (bad habits), probably..

I started recording on analogue equipment. That makes me old. So the way Ardour works makes sense to me.
If your first experiences of recording were with a computer then the concepts in Reaper may make just as much sense.
Ultimately it is your choice what you use and I wanted to put the case for Ardour as it has, in my opinion, the huge advantage of being free and open source.

started with analogue myself, back in the late eighties.. first normal cassette player in a rehearsal room, then 4 track porta studios (fostex) then 8-track digital hd recorder (roland vs-880), before i started to use computers in the early nineties.. first trackers, then i did some shady "try before buy" stuff, tested lots of software (cakewalk, cubase, nuendo, reason, ableton live), and protools in a couple of studios, before i switched 100% to linux 10 or so years ago, and now finally i've settled on a combo of bitwig and reaper (both legally and registered, of course), plus a bunch of my own scripts and plugins..

i do everything from electronic, experimental glitchy stuff to pop to hysterical black metal..

the more choices we have, the merrier, right? better chance for everybody to find whatever software suits them and their working methods.. and yes, ardour might be a good choice if opensource/libre is important for you..

anything goes.. as long as it works in linux!

bhilmers wrote: I don't see how Ardour is any more "analogue" than Reaper and I'm happy to have my view changed.

It's one of those words 'analogue'. I don't mean it has non-linearities and knocks some treble off as an endless procession of plug-ins attempt to do.

The paradigm in Ardour is a multitrack tape and a mixing desk. The paradigm in Reaper appears to be a load of dialog boxes, and for recording on a computer that's one way of doing it. Ardour has a mixer that is familiar to me from analogue desks :

Ardour is free if you use an older version from your distro repo, or from $US1/month if you want the latest and support its development. Reaper is $US60 unless you're a leaching scumbug and keep "evaluating" it after the demo is over.
For me, Reaper vs Ardour? - Harrison Mixbus. It is based on Ardour, and on sale ridiculously cheaply occasionally (I originally paid $US39 IIRC), and major version upgrades have been $19.
Personally I now use Mixbus 32C which is somewhat more expensive but probably overkill for home use. For basic MIDI stuff it is OK similar to Ardour, but for audio it is unbeatable IMO.

merlyn wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 8:00 pmThe paradigm in Reaper appears to be a load of dialog boxes...

Wait, what? A load of dialog boxes? I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be confrontational, but this doesn't even make sense. You seem to be saying you like Ardour because it looks like a mixing console. Great! You don't need any other justification. Reaper looks like that too. I like Ardour. I've used it off and on for 10 years. Believe it or not, all the dialog boxes are what turns me off of Ardour. Launching the program? The first thing you see is a dialog box asking for a new or old session. New session? Here is a dialog box asking you to pick a template and directory. Ready to go right? WRONG! Please set your sound server preferences. Great, now I finally have a session window. Adding a new track? Here is a dialog box asking you which kind. But wait, why can't I hear anything? Oh, I have to open another dialog box to set up the routing!

When I downloaded the Linux version of Reaper, I launched it and was immediately given a session window. And, Reaper chose to use my OS sound server preferences so I was able to start recording immediately by choosing "Track > Insert New Track (Ctrl+T)" then arming the track for recording. Literally immediately. The experience was so good I bought the license after finishing my first song.

100000% agree with the above...

sunrat wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 10:17 pm Ardour is free if you use an older version from your distro repo

No, it's opensource.

Kott wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 12:33 am

sunrat wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 10:17 pm Ardour is free if you use an older version from your distro repo

No, it's opensource.

It's uniquely Open Source and Payware... unless you compile it yourself or use your Distro packages which are NOT supported by the Ardour developers and most likely don't work as well as Ardour's bundled packages because they use several patched and tweaked versions of the supporting libs that are not patched the same way in Distro repositories.. You may get along fine with self-compiling or installing from your Package Manager... you may not but if you don't the Ardour developers are not going to support it and why would they? Paul supports himself and more with the project and the minimum dollar a month is basically not even paying him to host it on his servers.

It's Open Source and free of cost without support or Pay basically what you want down to a one dollar minimum and get full support... The beauty of choice!

For the record AVL-MXE (by arrangement with Paul Davis) always provides fully functional and supported bundles that are the most recent versions at time of release so that is another way to get a free fully supported version..