ARDOUR README
Paul Davis <paul@linuxaudiosystems.com> June 2003
Welcome to Ardour. This program is still very much under development,
but has now reached the stage where it will be productive and useful
to have other people testing it out and perhaps (hopefully!) fixing
bugs and adding features.
**** SECURITY *******************************************************
To run Ardour with the lowest latencies, it's necessary to use POSIX
Real-Time Scheduling as well as locking all the memory it uses into
physical RAM. These requirements can only be met if Ardour is run with
root priviledges.
On the other hand, things are not so bad. If you don't attempt to
install it setuid root (which actually won't work anyway), then
someone needs to have gained root access in order to run it like this.
If they already have root access, Ardour is the least of your
problems. So relax. We'll use capabilities once Linux kernels start
arriving with them enabled, though this won't help too much with
security, since the relevant capabilities would still allow a wiley
cracker to do anything at all.
Alternatively, you can choose to run Ardour without RT scheduling, and
then there's no concern at all. It just won't be useful in low latency
situations, which are desirable in most studio environments. Note that
this is not so important if you have audio hardware that is capable of
doing "hardware monitoring" - in this case, a lack of low latency will
simply make response to Ardour's UI controls a little sluggish, but
monitoring during capture will be excellent.
**** HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY *****************************************
Ardour uses JACK for all its audio I/O, thus providing seamless
connections to both audio hardware and other applications. Its really
not the right place to discuss JACK, but in case you are wondering:
Although JACK uses the ALSA 0.9.0 API, it exercises this API in a way
that no other application to date has done, and it also tries to use
certain hardware features that again, no other existing applications
use. As a result, although complete portability to all ALSA supported
h/w is an eventual and very achievable goal, there may be issues
surrounding h/w compatibility. Please remember that my primary goal
with JACK is to build a professional audio system, and with Ardour, a
professional digital audio workstation. If they happen to be useful
for people with 2/4 channel cards, then great, but it's not my own
primary focus.
One other important issue is that your audio interface must support
full duplex i/o with the same sample format for both capture and
playback. This means, for example, that the SoundBlaster AWE cannot
be used with JACK in full duplex mode - it only supports full duplex
i/o if one of the two directions (capture or playback) is 8 bit and
the other is 16. Very few cards have this kind of limitation, and if
they do, they typically are not suitable for use with applications
like JACK or Ardour for other reasons.
To date, JACK has been run with:
RME Hammerfall (Digi9652) (26 channels in, 26 channels out)
RME Hammerfall DSP (hdsp) (26 channels in, 26 channels out)
RME Hammerfall Light (Digi9636) (18 channels in, 18 channels out)
Midiman Delta series (ice1712 chipset) (12 channels in, 10 channels out)
Various consumer grade audio interfaces, typically with 2 channels
in, 2/4 channels out, including:
Hoontech 4Dwave-NX (Trident chipset)
Ensoniq 5880
Soundblaster 32
Soundblaster 64
Creative SBLive64
and many more.
So, basically, it appears to work for just about all ALSA supported
cards, which is the goal.
**********************************************************************
BUG REPORTING
-------------
Bugs should be reported to http://ardour.org/mantis/ . They are more
likely to be remembered and dealt with there. Please check the existing bugs
to make sure it has not already been reported and/or fixed in CVS.
COMPILING ARDOUR
----------------
Please see the file "BUILD".
RUNNING ARDOUR
--------------
NOTE: You must have a running JACK server before starting Ardour.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Typing "ardour" will hopefully have some effect. "ardour --help" lists
available options.
