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Sending SL to a DAW

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 4:37 pm
by NotinFlight
So I'm new to SL and I've been looking through old posts and can't seem to find what I'm looking for.
I currently run a macbook pro with el capitan. I found a version of JACK that's compatible with the most recent OSX and it runs fine. I've got SL running just fine. My input is a TASCAM US-366 Audio interface and I run a condenser mic through it. So far I can play an instrument into my condenser mic and work with SL and hear it through my headphones, which is really cool.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to send everything I'm doing in SL into a DAW. I've been using Adobe Audition CC for recording multitrack and from what I can tell is it's just going to be a mess to try and get the two working together. I understand that other people use Ableton and Logic successfully with SL, and I've also heard that Ardour is fairly straightforward. I'd like to try Ardour. Would anyone have any good links or info on how to use SL with Ardour on a mac and record what they're doing in SL?

Re: Sending SL to a DAW

Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2016 1:40 pm
by jesse
I think you might consider trying the AudioUnit version of SooperLooper, so the DAW can host it directly instead of using JACK. Can Audition use AudioUnit plugins?

Using Ardour is another option, you can use it with JACK or with the AudioUnit version. I don't have time to do a walkthrough now, but let me know if you have any troubles...

Re: Sending SL to a DAW

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2016 11:40 am
by NotinFlight
So I just wanted to post an update in case anyone else runs into the same situation..
This is on a macbook pro running el capitan with a USB audio interface and a condenser mic. I use a TASCAM US-366. Also, one cello.

What I did was I got Jack Pilot and qjackctl as well as the MIDI patchbay found from the link on MIDI controls on the sooperlooper site. I then got Ardour running on my mac. So first I opened qjackctl and hit the configure button, went through the list and the driver for my mac was coreaudio, and then I was able to select my USB audio interface by clicking on the little arrow next to the interface field.

I saved that and then closed qjackctl. Did this just to make sure I covered all my bases. Then I opened jack pilot and went to the preferences BEFORE starting jack pilot. I couldn't access the preferences after it was started, I'm guessing it doesn't allow you to do so for stability reasons (don't want anything running through jack crashing because you changed I/O settings mid stream). So I found the preferences menu and went in there and set my input and output to my USB audio interface as well. Note that you can't select your audio interface as the input and your built-in output (headphones in mac) as the output. It has to be the same device/driver for both input and output. Selecting a different device for output will automatically set the input to the same device as what you selected for output.

Then I let jack pilot continue to run. Opened SooperLooper. I close the first loop that opens and then add mono loops as I have just one mic through my audio interface. Then I set my threshold. sync to loop 1, and set each loop to play sync.

Then I open Ardour. When Ardour opens I click new session and make sure in the advanced options that "automatically connect to physical inputs/outputs" is selected. I go ahead and start. Then in Ardour I click session>add track,bus, or MIDI> and then in the window that pops up I select Audio Bus, make sure it's mono (since I have one mic), and then create the same number of mono audio buses as loops in SooperLooper. I also create an additional mono audio bus so that it picks up sound from the mic when SooperLooper isn't recording. I'll also use the same option in Ardour to create an Audio track in mono. Now that's all set.

I go to Jack Pilot. I click routing. I expand each item so I can see everything at once. The routing is as follows:

System SooperLooper
Capture 1 >connected to< Common In 1
Capture 2 >connected to< Common in 2

SooperLooper Ardour
Loop0 out>connected to< Audio Bus in 1
Loop1 out> connected to<Audio Bus in 2
Loop2 out>connected to<Audio Bus in 3
Loop3 out>connected to<Audio Bus in 4

System Ardour
Capture 1>connected to<Audio Bus 5 in
Capture 2>connected to<Audio Bus 5 in

Ardour Ardour
Audio Bus1 out 1t> connected to<Master Audio In 1
Audio Bus1 out 2> connected to<Master Audio In 2
Audio Bus2 out 1> connected to<Master Audio In 1
Audio Bus2 out 2> connected to<Master Audio In 2
Audio Bus3 out 1> connected to<Master Audio In 1
Audio Bus3 out 2> connected to<Master Audio In 2
Audio Bus4 out 1> connected to<Master Audio In 1
Audio Bus4 out 2> connected to<Master Audio In 2
Audio Bus5 out 1> connected to<Master Audio In 1
Audio Bus5 out 2> connected to<Master Audio In 2

Ardour System
Master Audio out1>connected to> Playback 1
Master Audio out2>connected to> Playback 2
Click Audio 1>connected to> Playback 1
Click Audio 2>connected to> Playback 2
Auditioner Audio 1>connected to>Playback1
Auditioner audio 2>connected to>Playback2
Audio in 1>connected to Playback1
Audio in 2>connected to>Playback2

Ardour Ardour
Audio bus 1 both outputs> connected to>Audio in 1 (the audio track for recording)
Audio bus 2 both outputs> connected to>Audio in 1 (the audio track for recording)
Audio bus 3 both outputs> connected to>Audio in 1 (the audio track for recording)
Audio bus 4 both outputs> connected to>Audio in 1 (the audio track for recording)
Audio bus 5 both outputs> connected to>Audio in 1 (the audio track for recording)


That sums up the routing, in the instances of the click audio, auditioner audio, and the audio in for the audio track I know those are close to the actual names but not 100% but I'm just not in front of my rig right now.

You could in theory create an audio track in Ardour for each loop and the microphone input (to record sound coming in when Sooperlooper isn't recording) and then route those to its own audio track to record them separately and that way have more control over the mix, but I like to do it this way for now because I feel that mixing individual loops and tracks wouldn't be as true to the performance.

What's also cool as that if you want you can add plugins to each individual audio bus/loop before it goes to output, and that opens up a lot of possibilities.

Ardour doesn't come with any plugins so I browsed around the interwebs and found that SC1 through SC4 are some of the most highly rated compression LADSPA plugins for Ardour as well as calf studios LAPSPA plugin package. I, however, just used the plugins that came with my mac system because honestly I can;t figure out how to install the other plugins, they have seemingly complicated ways to download (github wtf) and install them because they're built by and for Ubuntu users from what I can tell. Which is cool...but that's a whole world of its own I dare not tread upon.

Another issue for any new Ardour users on mac is that when you record you have to click the little red button on the Aduio track to arm it, then click the big record button at the top of the GUI, then you have to click the big Play button next to the big record button, also make sure you've dragged the time slider to the beginning of where you want to start recording in the track.

When outputting tracks from Ardour to an audio file myself and a lot of other people came across an issue with no sound in the wav file when played back in any other program. What you have to do is after you hit r on your keyboard in Ardour after done recording or click the little range tool in the little tools palette across the top of the master track and then select in the audio track the time range you want to output. Click export>to audio file and the window opens up. Then make sure the file type is what you want, Ardour only outputs audio to FLAC or WAV. You'll need a decent file format converter to convert to mp3 if that's what you want (VLC perhaps?). Then click the tab that says time range on the top right of the window. There will be 2 options, session and selected range. Click selected range and when you do you'll see empty check boxes appear. Click the channels you want included in the audio file. not clicking these channels will create an audio file with NO sound! Then click ok and it should output a sound file WITH sound!

I did run across an issue with the MIDI commands but I'll post a separate thread on that, maybe someone can help me out :)

I hope this was helpful!

Re: Sending SL to a DAW

Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2016 11:44 am
by NotinFlight
Also for anyone wondering, Adobe Audtion DOES support plugins such as AU. however it won't recognize SooperLooper, sadly. Which is why I switched to Ardour for SooperLooper recording in my home recording setup.