Routing stems from Ardour to MIO and back

The only real reason I keep a mac os x box running at all is so I can use one of the Metric Halo 2882 our Dept has. The flexibility of routing, quality of the pre-amps, and the sound of the various pre-amp and desk modelling adds a polish to a mix that I can't get any other way at the moment. Yesterday I set up a useful way of routing stems from Ardour to the MIO and back, and was really pleased with the results. I set up a series of stems (drums, brass and rhythm) on separate busses, then added an insert in each routing through the MIO via the RME optical outs (appearing in the MIO as ADAT ins). The results have to be recorded back into a separate track (you can't render a wav file for export when routing through an outboard processor obviously), but the results are worth it.

The flexibility of Jack and the Ardour system of inserts makes the audio routing in OSX (even if soundflower or rewire are used) look positively ancient (jack is available for OSX though I think). On another note, my new 64Studio box has been running for a week or so, working with audio almost daily and I has yet to register an xrun.