converser

A TouchOSC control surface for Ardour to aid in recording.

Why?

While recording you often find yourself out of reach from your DAW, especially when you position yourself for more optimal accoustics in mic'd situations. Constantly getting up to issue commands at your workstation can quickly kill your focus on the music and a quality performance.

The converser is a simple control surface you can use on a phone or tablet at your place of performance to help you lay down a track, review it, mark locations at which you would like to punch over, adjust the punch size / in / out, and have another go at it. See the workflow below for more.

Controls

From top to bottom,

• STOP playback
• PLAY from the playhead
• RETN, toggle auto return
• LOOP, play and loop the loop range
• STRT, goto start marker
• JOG forward or backward
• END, goto end marker
• PREV MARK, goto the previous mark
• MAKE MARK, add a marker at playhead
• DEL MARK, delete the marker at playhead
• NEXT MARK, goto the next mark
• PNCH ARND, configure the punch range around the playhead. Usually this is at a marker with an encoded punch size. This functionality requires the 'punch-around' editor action script to be configured as the session's Action Script #3.
• PNCH IN, toggle punch in
• PNCH OUT, toggle punch out
• RESZ, while playhead is at a marker, encode the 'punch around' size into the marker's name. The size is specified by the 4-option radio control just below. Each option represents 1, 2, 4, and 6 bars worth of time both left and right of the playhead. Thus options 1-4 result in punch sizes of 2, 4, 8, and 12 bars worth of time respectively.
• [Session Name]
• [Selected Track Name], or 'Master' when none selected. The track you wish to record to should be selected prior to beginning, as the converser does not support track selection at this time.
• ARM, there are two toggles to arm recording. The smaller button toggles master recording, while the larger toggles the selected track recording.
• STOP / FORGET, stop the in-process recording and remove the related recorded track material.
• UNDO the last action
• SAVE the session
• REDO the last undo
• heartbeat, shows your control surface is connected to the Ardour DAW. If the heartbeat no longer shows or no longer blinks, something has gone awry. Exit out of control surface view, then restart view mode.
• SIG, shows when a signal is detected via playback, or when your track is armed, shows interface input signal.

Requirements and Configuration

Ardour 6.9.0

Open Sound Control surfaces must be enabled through the preferences.

Edit > Preferences > Control Surfaces

• Choose and Enable "Open Sound Control (OSC)"
• Select "Show Protocol Settings"
  • OSC Setup:
    • Port Mode: Manual
    • Reply Manual Port: 8000 (or whatever you like)
    • Preset: Load Last Session
  • Default Strip Types:
    • Audio Tracks
    • Control Masters
    • Selected Tracks
  • Default Feedback (feedback value shoud be 8735 or more)
    • Strip Buttons
    • Strip Controls
    • Use SSID as Path Extension
    • Use Heartbeat
    • Master Section
    • Signal Present
    • Extra Select Only Feedback

The Punch-Around Lua script must be configured via the script manager.

Edit > Lua Scripts > Script Manager

• Action Scripts
  • Select "Action 3"
  • Press "Add/Set"
  • Choose the 'Punch-Around' script. Be sure to place it in Ardour's configured script directory.

You'll find it useful to create a template session with all these settings in place, along with your specific interface, track, and plugin stack already setup. Be sure to adjust the nudge clock to something acceptable for jogging forward / backward.

TouchOSC 1.1.1.136

The control surface is setup to talk to Ardour via OSC connection 1.

Connections > OSC

• Enable Connection 1 over UDP
  • Host: Set to Ardour's host IP
  • Send Port: Any
  • Receive Port: 8000, or match to whatever you set in Ardour's reply port
  • Zeroconf: Disabled

Workflow

Soon..