Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

hydrogen-music.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 134 posts

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#81

Post by squeaky-clean »

baldfat wrote: post #63
tjr225 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I then question your need for low latency? OS X and MacOS requires just as much work to get to the lowest latency and your handicapped if your have an Apple laptop. Your latency will be about the same as PusleAudio on Linux if you use default OS X MacOS settings. In most real world settings Windows will get a lower latency mostly due to better hardware on a Professional setup compared to the less then top end audio o…

Those links are either out of date or completely incorrect. None of this has ever been necessary for me on a Mac.

Focusrite doesn't even offer Mac drivers for most of their products, as the support is built in, for example[0], so I don't know why it's advising you to update your drivers.

[0] https://us.focusrite.com/downloads?product=Scarlett+2i4

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#82

Post by stevehiehn »

sampo wrote: post #76
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.

All kinds of sound-generating software you can control using midi, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI

Agreed. The hard part for me is finding software that runs serverside on linux. I have been using https://github.com/teragonaudio/MrsWatson which is really good

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#83

Post by jerf »

fundamental wrote: post #31
jerf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to have a good reference on using the Pi3 for audio? I spent a lot of Saturday trying to make mine do some stuff, and while a lot of the technical snafus were the usual sort, I did end up burning a lot of time googling around until I finally found someone who suggested turning off CPU performance scaling. Which was a forehead slap moment for me after that, but, still, it'd be nice if there was somewhere…

You may want to check out some of the posts at https://autostatic.com/ and the forums for zynthian https://discourse.zynthian.org/ . If memory serves both sites focused on some of the version 2 revisions of the Pi, but they may also help with your board as well.

Thank you. Using those with site: in Google has produced some interesting hints.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#84

Post by sean_appleby »

diminish wrote: post #66
cdawzrd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used both REAPER and Pro Tools professionally, my opinion is that REAPER is not basic at all -- it has every feature I have needed in a DAW, it's easy to use (for me, at least) and performs better than Pro Tools, at a far lower cost. It is one of my favorite pieces of commercial software.

Cost is low but 3rd party ecosystem including plugins is weak. It s like notepad++ of programming editors or winamp of music players. Effective, cheap, non innovative Yet OK.

I've only used Ableton, FL and Reason, so there could be something I'm missing, but doesn't Reaper support vsts? How could the ecosystem for plugins possibly be weak?

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#85

Post by djaychela »

Pxtl wrote: post #50
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…

After hearing some oldschool electronica my 9-year old asked me about drum machines. Is there a good kid-friendly one you can recommend for win or android?

This is a browser-based drum machine with two TB-303-like units:

http://errozero.co.uk/acid-machine/

Complete with HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13004621

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#86

Post by squeaky-clean »

diminish wrote: post #67
pierrec wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's effective, cheap but non innovative and a me too product. I bet it won't exist in 10 years in DAW business. It's feature set is a "me too" set of everything which exists with minimal innovative features on top. please don't misunderstand. I have no horse in this race. I like Reaper as much as I liked WinZip , winamp or Notepad++. But I wouldn't say it's enough to keep Windows installed on a private computer.

> I bet it won't exist in 10 years in DAW business.

It's already 11 years old... [0]

> It's feature set is a "me too" set of everything which exists with minimal innovative features on top.

I don't even feel like getting into this, but it looks like the troll is winning: Parameter Modulation, unlimited nesting/grouping/takes. Dynamically create and split audio channels on one track. Mixing of MIDI and Audio in one track. Video editing support. Surround Sound and (more multichannel) mixing. Scriptable with LUA. Includes it's own DSP scripting language (Jesusonic) with hundreds of included (and source available) tools made with it. Great support for odd or rapidly changing time signatures. Rock solid latency compensation (looking at you, Ableton). Ability to undo even after saving (looking at you again, Ableton). Completely theme-able.

Reaper isn't a perfect DAW, none of them are. But it's up there with the rest and has some features others can only dream of.

> But I wouldn't say it's enough to keep Windows installed on a private computer.

Reaper is officially supported on OSX and unofficially supported on Linux. Many VSTs run fine under Wine.

[0] http://www.reaper.fm/download-old.php?ver=0x&skip=100

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#87

Post by gens »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #58
tjr225 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find bout of your claims hard to believe as OSX has a sound architecture similar to PulseAudio.

Are the 3ms measured or is it just what OSX tells you ?

A buffer of 3ms at 48kHz holds 144 samples. That means shoveling 144 fresh samples (per channel, ofc) ~333 times a second and sending them to the sound card immediately. That may be possible if your sound card supports resampling (and minor magic) and only without a sound server (OSX uses one). Either that or you have an impressive cpu. Feel free to correct me at any point.

edit: PS This is only the program->sound_card part. Programs themselves add a ton of latency and sound cards add to it as well. In reality even 10ms is beyond perfect conditions.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#88

Post by n00b101 »

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 found it prohibitively complicated to set up a well-working low-latency audio workstation, even though I had one of the few soundcards that had drivers for Linux (Edirol FA-101).

I don't know anything about your area, but it sounds like a pre-built Linux image with realtime kernel and maybe some custom driver setup would be useful here. I use LinuxCNC [1] and they provide a super-convenient Linux image that take only a few minutes to get setup and controlling real CNC machines / robots.

[1] http://linuxcnc.org/

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#89

Post by dwringer »

eropple wrote: post #79
baldfat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never in my life seen a Mac out perform a Window machine when it comes to latency and professional audio recording. When it comes to $100-$200 parts it comes to drivers and sometimes Mac wins and sometimes Windows wins. I have a bias that goes beyond Pro-Tools but Pro-Tools was a thing because Apple hardware was not capable of producing Professional level recording without spending thousands of dollars in thei…

> Since Windows XP Windows and Audio Latency has not been an issue Core Audio literally-just-works with low latency and aggregated devices. DAWs on Windows still either use MME/DX for north of 50ms, often 100ms+ latency or ASIO (exclusive device usage and no aggregation, assuming your hardware even has ASIO drivers because ASIO4ALL is at best rickety) on Windows. I don't know what you think is going on with OS X, but…

... but with ASIO, it is quite possible to get 3ms latency in Windows at 96kHz. I agree it would be nice if the device weren't locked up by the DAW using ASIO, or if updated driver support weren't so hit-and miss, but it still works exceptionally well for what it is. It also makes Windows completely viable as a production platform.

Re: Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux

#90

Post by redacted »

Pxtl wrote: post #50
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…

After hearing some oldschool electronica my 9-year old asked me about drum machines. Is there a good kid-friendly one you can recommend for win or android?

Check out the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators [0], so much fun to play with. I enjoy messing around with chiptunes on my PO-20 Arcade far more than I ever did in software.

The PO-12 [1] and PO-32 [2] (if you can find one) are the two drum machines in that line up.

[0] https://teenage.engineering/products/po

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzEvGGINE20 (this guy has videos for most of the PO series)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMk8x9fsUQE

Post reply on HN