Hardware & Software Recommendations?

[Christopher Stamper]

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 1:55 PM, Erik Rasmussen <MailForErik at gmail.com>wrote:

> Thanks so much for all the responses!  Any thoughts on these comments?
>
> Need to work with full quality compressed files:
> Ardour seemed like the program I should learn to use, but I was rather put
> off by the lack of FLAC support and requirement to manually convert all
> files to WAVE using some other software.  It also seemed like I randomly had
> trouble getting Ardour to capture or playback audio.  Any tips?
>
In producing a 30 minute radio broadcast program, I work with numerous audio
> files that are normally in excess of 1 hour in length.  Full CD quality Wave
> files of this length consume a lot of hard drive space and with the volume
> of files that I need to record, capture and edit, it is simply not real
> practical to work in Wave files.  FLAC serves very well in that you get full
> quality without the space consumption of Wave files.
>
> Sony Sound Forge and Sony Vegas Pro do something they call "proxy
> compressed files".  So when you go to open a compressed file their software
> de-compresses it automatically, (without requiring the user to do so
> manually), and allows you to work with the file, and then when you save the
> software it will save back to the compressed format and automatically delete
> the "proxy file" when you close the application.  It would be nice if Ardour
> could do something like that.
>

Are you understanding the typical DAW workflow?

Your project folder contains all the audio for the project, in whatever
format the DAW (in this case Ardour) chooses to use. If you import existing
audio to the project, such as a FLAC file, the DAW will copy and maybe
convert the file automatically. There will now be a new file in the project
folder. The file you imported can be deleted without effecting the project.

You can record audio in the project, and files will automatically be created
in the background.

All audio in the project is represented as one or more regions. You can move
these 'regions' around in the project, and merge or split them. It doesn't
matter if they came from an external file, or if it was recorded from within
the DAW software.

When you are done, you export the project as a single track in whatever
format you choose. This is how almost all 'pro audio' software works, so you
might as well just get used to it. It really makes more sense than anything
else.

Note that through the entire process, you shouldn't have to worry about the
files or file formats. Everything is done automatically. The exception
obviously is importing/exporting.



> I see that Daniel Worth said Ardour 2.8.3 can import and export FLAC files.
>  Is that the version of Ardour that comes with Ubuntu Studio 9.10?
>

If not all you have to do is let it update (via update manager/apt).


*AUDACITY:*
> I want to like Audacity, but it seems very slow for me to save and a little
> cumbersome to navigate.  As stated above, I'm generally working with large
> files and perhaps that's what slows down Audacity?  When I started digital
> audio production I had to sacrifice lots of wait time while the software did
> it's saving.  I hate to have to go back to long wait times again.
>
> Does anyone know of any tricks to make Audacity save large files faster, or
> are there any other alternative audio editing and mixing software programs
> anyone would recommend?
>

Audacity is *bad*. Really bad.

Well, ok maybe it's not that bad. But I have no idea why you would want to
use it for anything but a quick edit operation. Ardour can do everything it
can, and more (except maybe mp3 exports ;-). Plus, Ardour is easier to use.

Hope this helps!

-- 
Christopher Stamper

Email: christopherstamper at gmail.com
Skype: cdstamper
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-users/attachments/20091109/2e93acb1/attachment.htm