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