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Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

hydrogen-music.org

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Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#51

Post by stevehiehn »

zhengyi13 wrote: post #45
stevehiehn wrote: post #38

Does anyone know if it Hydrogen can be controlled via api/commandline? I would like to try generating patterns with machine learning.

It's not precisely your desire/use-case, but that sounds vaguely like you might like some of the programmatic sound generation systems out there: Overtone - http://overtone.github.io/ Tidal - https://tidalcycles.org/ Perhaps those might be hooked into something you're already building?

Thanks! I'm aware of super collider and it is cool. However i'm not interested in real-time. I have been generating midi patterns and rendering audio server-side over many hours. I've started hand rolling a system to play drum samples from generated patterns. It would be nice if i could find something already built.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#52

Post by pierrec »

diminish wrote: post #40
donquichotte wrote: post #10

I have tried Hydrogen some time ago when I tried to build a linux audio workstation with Jack and Ardour. As much as it pains me to say this, don't expect it to be even remotely as good as commercial software drum machines like EZDrummer, Superior Drummer or Studio Drummer in terms of sample quality or usability. Generally, I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, e…

>> ..only reason I have Windows installed on my private computer When you say Reaper, you lose me. I have used it for a long time and it's really the most basic of all the DAW alternatives.

REAPER's feature set is huge, it's also one of the most customizable DAWs I've used. I know this kind of thing is pretty subjective, but even then, there is no way I could possibly call it "basic" compared to the most popular DAWs out there.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#53

Post by [deleted] »

dmix wrote: post #24
donquichotte wrote: post #10

I have tried Hydrogen some time ago when I tried to build a linux audio workstation with Jack and Ardour. As much as it pains me to say this, don't expect it to be even remotely as good as commercial software drum machines like EZDrummer, Superior Drummer or Studio Drummer in terms of sample quality or usability. Generally, I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, e…

I haven't used Hydrogen yet but it seems to be much more than just a drum synth/simulator, such as the ones you referenced as comparison (Studio Drummer, EZDrummer, etc). Drum machines can mix and compose a variety to samples and synth sounds, these samples can be drum kit sounds but it's not necessary. So you likely only sampled a limited portion of the functionality. You could also always purchase high quality drum…

[deleted]

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#55

Post by fundamental »

flavor8 wrote: post #34
fundamental wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the number of single developer projects combined with developer attrition has certainly orphaned a ton of linux-audio projects.

It would be nice if Ubuntu pruned dead / barely working products from their repos. There's an astonishing number of frustratingly bad audio apps in their main repo.

I'd say that's part of their issue, the other side is that they don't seem to track the development of projects all that well. In some cases this simply is shipping old versions with known and long fixed bugs and in other cases they miss the evolution of various projects as maintainers change over. The latter case includes some abandoned/nearly-abandoned standalone tools getting converted to plugins (generally LV2) and receiving more active development.

More active package repositories such as kxstudio seem to resolve at least some of this friction.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#57

Post by squeaky-clean »

diminish wrote: post #40
donquichotte wrote: post #10

I have tried Hydrogen some time ago when I tried to build a linux audio workstation with Jack and Ardour. As much as it pains me to say this, don't expect it to be even remotely as good as commercial software drum machines like EZDrummer, Superior Drummer or Studio Drummer in terms of sample quality or usability. Generally, I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, e…

>> ..only reason I have Windows installed on my private computer When you say Reaper, you lose me. I have used it for a long time and it's really the most basic of all the DAW alternatives.

> I have used it for a long time and it's really the most basic of all the DAW alternatives.

You clearly haven't. The only possible way there's a shred of truth to this sentence is if you're referring to the included sample-sets/virtual instruments compared to other DAWs, which Reaper doesn't include many of.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#58

Post by squeaky-clean »

tjr225 wrote: post #42
baldfat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care what OS your on. When you start talking about latency it is all a nightmare. If latency isn't an issue then Pulse Audio works totally fine. I actually like Jack when it is concerning latency and think it is a good system. BUT it is a pain. I used 2 separate sound cards. One is a Pro level I/O breakout box that Jack controls and the on board sound card is controlled by PulseAudio.

I have no issues with latency on MacOS with absolutely zero configuration. It's one of the reasons I won't switch from MacOS to linux.

Likewise, none of my audio devices have required special drivers for Mac, and I can easily get 3ms latency by just plugging it in and making sure buffer size it at a minimum. I produced on Windows forever and didn't believe there would have been a noticeable difference switching to OSX.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#59

Post by sowbug »

zevv wrote: post #21
donquichotte wrote: post #10

I have tried Hydrogen some time ago when I tried to build a linux audio workstation with Jack and Ardour. As much as it pains me to say this, don't expect it to be even remotely as good as commercial software drum machines like EZDrummer, Superior Drummer or Studio Drummer in terms of sample quality or usability. Generally, I found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, e…

For me a huge change the past years was the coming of Bitwig Studio audio workstation to Linux. Commercial software, but rock solid and high quality.

Slightly off-topic, but does Bitwig have a restrictive licensing scheme that makes reinstallation cumbersome? I love FL Studio because it doesn't have a limit on number of installations. As a geek, I change my main machine often, and it's so convenient to install FL Studio if I get an itch to bang something out, and not to worry about how many activations I've used up.

Ableton is a turn-off for this reason. They're actually pretty cool about adding activations if you let them know you're moving machines, but it offends me to ask permission to use something I've already paid for.

If Bitwig (1) works well on Linux, (2) works well as a DAW, and (3) doesn't dick around with activation rules, then I'd be delighted both to support them and to switch my (current) hobby workstation from Windows to Linux.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#60

Post by squeaky-clean »

peapicker wrote: post #19
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most DAWS might have drum machines but most serious users end up using a third party product. The built-in ones are undeniably good but thinks like Kontact/EZDrummer etc. are on another level.

Never used Kontact or EZ Drummer, but seems like it would be hard to beat Ableton Live Suite's combo of drumracks and stacking effects per drum sample... Do you have experience with both? Any reason I should look into the former when I've invested in the latter? edit: Nevermind, after looking at Native's offering (Kontact), I can see it has a lot of advantages for a certain kind of music, but that isn't the music I'm…

Battery would be a closer competitor to Ableton's Drum Rack. It also included gigs of samples from 808, 909 to heavily processed sounds and percussion. The included samples are about equal in quality to Ableton's, but Battery includes built-in FX and routing for each sample. So you no longer need to add a compressor to each sample, and an EQ, etc. It's already there, as well as effects like emulations of older sampler hardware. The downside to Battery being that it's more cumbersome to add effects which aren't already included (you need to route them to a separate output, and depending on your DAW process it on a new track).

Geist2 and Nerve are some other closer commercial quality alternatives, though I don't have firsthand experience with them. Ableton's Drum Rack is really fantastic though, and also pro quality.

Kontakt is a different beast. It includes it's own scripting engine and can easily create multi-sample instruments with different randomly chosen samples or samples chosen based on velocity or note (or both). You would use Kontakt to create a realistic sounding drum kit, or piano, etc. Things that you don't want to sound sampled. EZDrummer / Superior Drummer are similar, but specific to drumkits and you can only play with the included packs/sounds.

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