53: JACKing up my audio in Ardour
2009-04-20
Download MP3 For Geekons Episode 53
Pop-Up: BumpTop
- Bump top is a 3-D environment to replace your windows desktop that Ricky from New Mexico sent in for us to review.
- It allows you to throw icons around, group them in piles, and "hang" photos (or photo-streams)
- The coolest feature I've found is the ability to subscribe to photostreams (rss feeds of photos)
- This is a Windows only app, so I tested it out at a friend's house and quickly threw together some meaningful photo albums, like my own flickr stream and all flickr photos tagged lolcat
- There are also other plugins like the ability to quickly drag a photo to facebook or post a comment to twitter.
- Overall, I've found Bump Top to be a fun novelty, but not something that I see being a real benefit.
- I would still label this as a novelty, not a productivity tool.
- While there is a paid version, the free version does all the core stuff you'd want it to do.
- 3 out of 5 stars, It seems stable and reliable... but it answers a question I never asked.
Geek-Tweak: Setting up Jack Server and Ardour
- Jack server is an audio processing server that allows you to route audio from one application to another.
- Ardour is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that does multi-track recording, automations, and ll kinds of other stuff I don't really understand.
- Here's what I did to get Jack and Ardour working in Ubuntu 8.10
- Installed ubuntustudio-audio (which includes Jack, Ardour, and Jack Control)
- Opened Jack Control and started the service
- Opened Ardour and creatd a new project
- Right-clicked in the track list to create a new track named Audio-1.
- Clicked the "Connections" button in Jack Control
- Selected my microphone as the source, audio-1 as the destination and clicked "Connect"
- In ardour, I displayed the mixer window, and right-clicked on the audio-1 track to add an EQ plugin.
- I then double-clicked on the EQ plugin to edit the properties and de-activate the "bypass" feature.
- Back in the main Ardour console, I clicked the record button on the main control toolbar and on the controls for the Audio-1 track and started talking in the microphone, monitoring my levels in the mixer.
- Once I got the volume set properly on my microphone I hit the play button on the main controls to start recording.
- When I was done recording, I clicked the stop button.
- Now, to preview the recording, I went back to the mixer and clicked on "output" and chose where I wanted audio-1 to be played to. I chose Output 1 + 2 (because I'm recording mono, but want to hear my voice coming out of both speakers.
- Now, I can rewind and press play, or just press the "H" key to preview the audio I just recorded.
- After editing in Ardour, you can save the multitrack session and export as a .wav
- To export to MP3, you'll need to throw your WAV file into a separate MP3 encoder. I normally use audacity, but LAME from the command line would work just as well.
- Some other cool things you can do with JACK is plug in a multi-input sound card (like a presonus or M-audio interface) and use the JACK connections to route the audio from certain sources to other sources, sometimes through other software.
- To play around, I like to send my microphone straight to the left speaker, but also send it to Jack Rack (which allows me to mess with the audio, adding silly stuff like flanges and reverb, or adding usefull effects like a gate, EQ, and compressor), then send the output of Jack Rack to my right speaker.
- All of these effects are available in Ardour, but using JackRack could actually allow me to process the audio before it ever gets to Ardour. (Not sure why I'd want to, but it is nice to have the option!)
View-Source: Advice for Joel #3
- This week we're going over the verse my parents chose for Joel, which is Psalm 46:1
- I was going to joke about God being the help desk, but that would only cover the help in trouble portion.
- As I tried to think of geeky parallels, I realized that the lack of a good illustration just goes to show how amazing our God really is.
- Not only is God our refuge, where we can run to and be protected by, He is also our strength to stand and to fight.
- He is ever-present and more than willing to help us, no matter where we are physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
- Fortunately the Bible doesn't say that we can only come to Him when he isn't busy, or when we are perfect.
- It just says we can only come to Him through His son, Jesus.
- Throughout the week as I get frustrated, overwhelmed, and especially as I am preparing for the birth of my son I will be relying more and more on the promises made here.
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