Can't you extend an existing app rather than starting a new project?
I know that Ardour has been used for sound installations, how are the
requirements of a theater different?
Was looking at it, but at this time I am not sure Ardour is the best
choice. Plus I gotta refresh my coding at the same time as its been a
while, ardour is not what I like to jump in on;)
Useful things in CURRENT playback software I can think of right off hand...
1. The ability to have a number of cues start instantly, and seemably
random points in time, but in a consecutive order most of the time. To
give an example...
I build a thunderstorm sequence. In this sequence are 5 cues that loop
back to each other and fade between each other an indefinite amount of
time, killed by a sixth cue.
Also in this sequence are other specific sound effects that do not occur
at set intervals, but are actor motivated, or otherwise dependant on
other factors than just time. For example, a phone might ring, thunder
might crash(And have to be sync with a lighting console for lighting
effects), lightning might strike and blow out the lights on stage, whatever.
And then we have the cue that fades out the 5 cues of the background
ambience of the storm.
The ability to mix in more ways than Ardour currently does. Matrixes in
particular, but an equivalent to a VCA would also be good, as well as
post fade aux sends. Some of this from a playback perspective might be
addressed by the addition of ambisonic panning to a variety of different
sources in ardour, which has been discussed.
The ability to launch multiple cue lists, each one might do different
sets of effects like are described above. For instance one cue list
might contain all the thunderstorm ambience, and one might contain the
otherwise motivated effects. The ambience cue list might be
launched(Fire and forget) from the initial cue list, that might also
contain the set effects, and a cue to stop the ambient cue list.
Now I have not looked to much into playlists in ardour to see if they
might be modified to handle things like this. My ideal would be a very
modularized system, and I would love to be able to do it in Ardour
itself, however (And the devs can correct me if I am wrong) this is not
a direction I believe Ardour should take as IMO it should probably
concentrate on one thing, and that is being the best multitrack audio
recording and editing solution it can be. Get to fragmented in the
direction it takes and it will suffer as a result IMO.
Things like post fade aux sends(Which in themselves could be the basis
for a matrix if attached to a bus) and VCAs I could see being
implemented eventually into Ardour, though I am currently not holding my
breath as there are other things with higher priority. If that did
happena nd playlists got modified to be able to be launched
independantly, as well as a functions to control other things, like
sequencers or whatever via Midi/OSC it might get there.
But then the question is, from a standpoint of accepting there is
limited time for people to spend on these things, which is going to
create a better product for it, one that is dedicated to a single use,
or one that is modified for multiple uses?
I am certainly not against digging into Ardour and submitting patches
after I finish refreshing my memory and going through the simple APIs I
have been dealing with audio(IE Jack and libsndfile) but at the moment I
am not sure it is the best way of handling things. But dang being able
to run a show and record it in the same program would be amazingly nice
for me;)
Seablade
