- Ardour will only ever deal with a single audio device. If you - want to use more than one, you have two choices: -
-- Ardour is fundamentally designed to be a component in a - pro-audio/music creation environment. Standard operating practice - for such setups involves using only a single digital sample - clock (something counting off the time between audio samples). - This means that trying to use multiple independent soundcards is - problematic, because each soundcard has its own sample clock, running - independently from the others. Over time, these different clocks - drift - out of sync with each other, which causes glitches in the audio. You - cannot stop this drift, although in some cases the effects may be - insignificant enough that some people might not care about them. -
-- Thus in an ideal world you should not use multiple independent - soundcards but instead use a single device with a single clock and all - the inputs, outputs and other features that you need. -
-- Of course, a lot of people don't live in an ideal world, and believe - that software should make up for this. -
- -- In CoreAudio, aggregate devices provide a method to use - multiple soundcards as a single device. For example, you can - aggregate two 8-channel devices so that you can record 16 channels - into Ardour. -
-
- If you are using a single typical 3rd party
- audio interface (such as those from Apogee, RME, Presonus, and many
- others), or you are using JackPilot or a similar
- application to start JACK, you do not need to worry about this.
- You will need to set up an aggregate device only if either
- of the following conditions are true:
-
- In the case of your builtin audio device, you will need to create - an aggregate device that combines "Builtin Input" and "Builtin - Output" into one device. -
-- The precise instructions for creating an aggregate device on OS X - have varied from one released to another. -
-- Please see the instructions at http://jackaudio.org/faq -
-