LinuxMusicians

I can run hydrogen with the on board audio using Qjackctl or Alsa. If you run 'top' you will see that there is plenty of CPU & RAM still available. If you start Hydrogen from a terminal either way there are loads of errors. I do not know enough to be able to use them constructively. I did try speeding the tempo & noticed the timing seems to drift.

I do have a USB interface but I thought it would be cool to use the Pi to easily turn a telly into a drum machine. The Pi gets its power off the TV's USB socket and the sound comes out the TV speakers making it a light and easy set up.

I'll try building eDrummer for the Rpi

Auto,

The drum map I supplied with it uses nearly the full set of velocity sensitive samples from the salamander kit. This is a

very large

set. That's what my beta tester wanted -- the highest quality and largest selection of velocity levels, suitable not for running on a COM like the raspberry, but a desktop PC. Besides the fact that your setup doesn't need a set of velocity-sensitive samples at all, even if your pads were vel sens, I'd still go with a slightly trimmed down sample set for a constrained device like the pi. (Phil is really picky about vel levels, more-so than most users would be).

The reason I asked if you wanted to work with me on this isn't because I don't think you, entirely on your own, can compile/test an edrummer setup that isn't tuned for your system. It's because, with a little info about your setup, I could supply you with that tuned setup right at the start. Also, if you like the results, I could implement additional features tuned to your setup, such as loading different kits when you press a pad combo.

Anyway, this is just FYI. I do realize there are folks who simply prefer doing it on their own. So, moving on...

English Guy,

Are you using hydrogen to load a kit that you play via pads? Or is hydrogen itself playing the (sequenced) beats? If the former, then eDrummer already is designed for that. Phil was having the same problems as you. He was trying various linux programs for live drum triggering and he just couldn't get the latency low enough. (But note Phil is very fussy. He actually has a measuring setup he uses to test latency down to microseconds. He's obsessive... and I love that. He went from 9 ms latency with a jack app down to 2 ms latency with edrummer playing the same kit on the same hardware. He's happy). If you're interested let me know, and I can work with you to get a setup tuned to your system. But I don't have a pii, so you either need to compile source on your pii, or have someone willing to do it (maybe auto).

edrummer is based on my gig software of a drumbox, which plays various drum patterns programmed into it. I've gigged with it about 4x a week for the past 4 years. (My Windows version 3 years -- Linux version 1). If you use hydrogen to play sequenced beats, then you may want to become the first beta tester for "eRhythm", a varient on drumbox that loads a MIDI file of a drumbeat and plays it back on a sampled kit like eDrummer. I anticipate something available within a week from someone serious about beta testing.

Let me know if you're interested.

@ j_e_f_f_g Sorry - at the moment I am just after programmed beats.

(I do have Midi drum pads & (perhaps more interesting) an old Casio Digital Guitar, so I might give your software a try at some stage but at the moment I have other fish to fry. It might also provide a lighter drum synth than Hydrogen for a sequencer such as Muse or Seq24 to drive).

I have just compiled hydrogen stable from source and got it to work with jack and then alsa (for some reason my initial attempt with alsa failed but it worked after running it with Jack*).

You could not run much else, but this can turn the Pi into a stand alone drum machine with just internal sound.

* Edit: using the command line I was able to see that Hydrogen was re-using or starting Jack when I thought it was shut down. It actually only works under jack.

@ Autostatic: Very intersting (as was your Pi drum machine video as well).

Thanks! In the meanwhile it seems the biggest USB issues have been resolved with the so-called fiq_split patch. Haven't tested it myself as I'm not very fond of using rpi-update. Let's hope it hits the Raspbian repositories soon.

@ autostatic - what is the little USB soundcard you were using with your Pi please? It seems a great idea to have a second USB interface so the Pi can be used as a separate FX box etc when recording to my main machine.

With rpi-update - doesn't that just affect the SD card? Couldn't you just clone your install & try it on a spare card & then update to see if it helps or hinders?

On a different note, the progress being made with Wayland/Weston seems promising in brining better & smoother graphics.

English Guy wrote:@ autostatic - what is the little USB soundcard you were using with your Pi please?

http://dx.com/p/virtual-5-1-surround-usb-2-0-external-sound-card-22475

English Guy wrote:With rpi-update - doesn't that just affect the SD card?

True.

English Guy wrote:Couldn't you just clone your install & try it on a spare card & then update to see if it helps or hinders?

I could but haven't had the time yet. I doubt though if I would benefit from the fiq_split patch as I'm only using USB1.1 audio interfaces.

English Guy wrote:On a different note, the progress being made with Wayland/Weston seems promising in brining better & smoother graphics.

He he, it must be months ago I last booted my RPi with a display attached to it

@autostatic: Thanks. I have managed to find and order a usb 2.0 version for less than an English pound: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speaker-Audio-S ... rd+Adapter

I'm afraid my networking skills are poor so I still use a monitor. I am hoping to use the Pi as a second PC to use to learn some networking/SSH skills.

I do however have a USB midi keyboard so the synth thing should be fun to try with that.

Thanks again
Guy

English Guy wrote:@autostatic: Thanks. I have managed to find and order a usb 2.0 version for less than an English pound: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speaker-Audio-S ... rd+Adapter

Ah cool, looks exactly like the one I have. It should work well with the RPi.

English Guy wrote:I'm afraid my networking skills are poor so I still use a monitor. I am hoping to use the Pi as a second PC to use to learn some networking/SSH skills.

The RPi is perfectly fit for usage as a little PC and also a great little device to learn new stuff.

English Guy wrote:I do however have a USB midi keyboard so the synth thing should be fun to try with that.

The you should really give amsynth a try, it's light on resources but has a lot of great sounds.

Just a (hopefully) useful note in case it happens to anyone else. I increased the memory split to 128 & jack stopped working. Put it down to 64 & it was fine.

Good to know, I'll add it to the Wiki. I'm using gpu_mem=16 as I run the RPi headless anyway.

Well that's running headless sorted. Is there (can anyone please tell me) a way to send midi data across the network to the Pi?

English Guy wrote:Well that's running headless sorted. Is there (can anyone please tell me) a way to send midi data across the network to the Pi?

JACK MIDI or aseqnet, or encode to OSC and back.