trouble syncing Hydrogen to luppp

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Linuxmusician01
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Re: trouble syncing Hydrogen to luppp

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

First of all thank you for the tip about my Hydrogen problems and the lowlatency kernel! I'll try it.
Digital Larry wrote:
Linuxmusician01 wrote: If I use Qtractor as the master for the tempo I've no problems. Hydrogen still seems to miss a beat every now and then though... Or replaces the beat (bass drum) partly with some sort of noise...
Well here's what I see now. Just running QTractor is sufficient to make Hydrogen stop buzzing and follow luppp's transport control and tempo changes. THAT is very cool, although incomprehensible. People smarter than me will say "of course".

But now, I am getting a glitch on the first bass drum hit that Hydrogen emits when the loop repeats. Every single time. It's not semi random as it was when I was using a plain kernel.
1. Thanks for sharing the "experimental result" of running Qtractor together w/ Luppp. :)

2. Darn it! That stubborn Hydrogen problem.
Digital Larry wrote:[...] When triggered from luppp, the "current location" indicator [in Hydrogen] moves forward but frequently skips backwards a step. So I suspect that luppp is doing something weird with Jack clocks or location requests or something. It did not show up in my more detailed Jack log scan however.
That's exactly the same problem that I have w/ Luppp and Hydrogen every now and then.
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Re: trouble syncing Hydrogen to luppp

Post by merlyn »

Digital Larry wrote: I just ran Sooperlooper, Hydrogen and Non Mixer for about an hour with no crashes, could be promising.
Does that mean the Hygrogen glitch was a problem with Luppp and not JACK?
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Re: trouble syncing Hydrogen to luppp

Post by Digital Larry »

merlyn wrote:
Digital Larry wrote: I just ran Sooperlooper, Hydrogen and Non Mixer for about an hour with no crashes, could be promising.
Does that mean the Hygrogen glitch was a problem with Luppp and not JACK?
Well, let me be somewhat circumspect. I think so. BUT...

a) luppp showed sync problems as Jack Master with both Hydrogen and Non Sequencer.

b) Using Hydrogen as the clock master to trigger and sync Sooperlooper gets around some aspect of Jack looping glitchiness as (I believe) that Sooperlooper only uses Jack for sync but it does not actually respond to Jack transport messages. For example, if you have SL running, Jack transport will not stop it. So in this case it is perhaps serendipitous that SL doesn't follow Jack transport, only sync.

So far, barring occasional problems like apps crashing (random) and certain plugins not working (get what you pay for), I am finding the Sooperlooper and Hydrogen combo to be just what I was looking for. I believe I will do a video on it eventually.

Here's what I found:
a) Put in 4 bass drum beats into Hydrogen for a metronome.
b) Play something "funky" on top of that into track 1 of SL. I believe that "funky" translates to "syncopated over a 16th note pulse".
c) Put it some snare hits. Those aligned with beats 2 and 4.
d) Now the bass drum on beat 3 actually sounds better if I advance it 1/16th note.
e) I put a cowbell on beat 4. It sounds better 1/16th note late.

I don't understand the finer points of funk music to explain this, but I can tell you that this is exactly what I have been looking to accomplish for several years, in a stripped down way. There are some rough edges to work out but at least I have a direction now. :D :mrgreen:
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Re: trouble syncing Hydrogen to luppp

Post by Digital Larry »

Today I used Ardour as the Jack Timing Master and turned that setting off in Hydrogen. Now Hydrogen drops notes and or glitches in a repeatable-but-changes-every-time-you-start fashion. So I am guessing that Hydrogen may have a problem when it is following some other Jack Timing Master, but not when it is the timing master. Oh well.
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Re: trouble syncing Hydrogen to luppp

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Digital Larry wrote:Today I used Ardour as the Jack Timing Master and turned that setting off in Hydrogen. Now Hydrogen drops notes and or glitches in a repeatable-but-changes-every-time-you-start fashion. So I am guessing that Hydrogen may have a problem when it is following some other Jack Timing Master, but not when it is the timing master. Oh well.
Thank you for that information. So it's no use to update one's kernel to a low latency one to get rid of those Hydrogen glitches? Because I've got exactly the same problems w/ Hydrogen. As soon as I use it in combination w/ another application (like a DAW) it becomes unpredictable: it glitches. Hydrogen's interface is brilliant, but since it's sample based I might as well look for a VST drum-plugin that also works w/ samples (Hydrogen's samples for instance) that I can program using the piano roll in Qtractor.


P.S. This Hydrogen problem might be worth a separate topic. As of now I am very, very curious if there is anybody out there who successfully uses Hydrogen in Linux in combo w/ a DAW.
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