Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux(hydrogen-music.org) |
Hydrogen – An advanced drum machine for Linux(hydrogen-music.org) |
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, even though I had one of the few soundcards that had drivers for Linux (Edirol FA-101).
EDIT: That was like 5 years ago, maybe the audio landscape has changed until then. 2017, year of the Linux Audio Workstation!
2nd EDIT: Today I use Reaper on Windows. Reaper is amazing and the only reason I have Windows installed on my private computers. It is to audio editing and recording what Sublime Text is to text editing: slick, fast, inexpensive, easy to install, easy to use.
This is a pastern based drum machine for non-acoustic sounding drums (Usually). So you are comparing two different tools.
> This is a pastern based drum machine for non-acoustic sounding drums (Usually).
The only difference is the set of samples used. Hydrogens sample section, like soft-ROMplers such as NI Battery, has a multi layering method of arranging samples for each instruments according to the played velocity. Actually it offers even more layers than Battery so with the right set of samples it could even sound more realistic.
The only problem is the lack of free real sounding acoustic drum samples as most people don't want to use them in favor of distorted sounds with ton of effects. This is so wrong; a decent sound engineer can get the "industrial" sound out of a jazz acoustic set, but no mixing console god in the world can do the other way around. Never ever ever ever sample drums with effects, always record the samples dry and add effects afterwards when needed.
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.
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 samples and use it with this OSS programs if the built in library sucks. From experience, you could accomplish quite a bit with relatively simple drum machines.
The synth products on the other hand were the thing that was complex and needs to be high quality. Which is likely what you were looking for a drum simulation.
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.
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)
http://errozero.co.uk/acid-machine/
Complete with HN discussion:
If they start plugging in basic effects pedals, they'll learn about signal flow and signal chains that are relevant to all styles.
There's no fundamental difference between a microphone, a guitar or a drum machine plugging in to a delay pedal. Learning the basics of EQ (bass, mid, low) gets them on the path to studio mastering if they're interested in that side later. If they decide they don't like the creative side, they have the basics to learn live sound tech or sound engineering.
Good luck and have fun :)
If you search the app store for "808" you'll find a lot of apps. The benefit is the original "real" 808 was relatively simple to use.
Also DAW builtins: Ableton live DM's, garage band/Logic Pro drummers, I'm pretty sure FL studio, cubase, bitwig, reaper all have something similar
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.
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.
You must have a different definition of basic. I've never felt limited by Reaper.
There have been great improvements on the latest years in regard to plugin availability and support for professional workflows/devices that might be overlooked.
(As implied, I've googled already. A lot.)
(The Pi3 seems to have more than enough CPU power for it to do what I want but I was having trouble just routing audio in a USB mic straight out to the speakers without dropouts and failures two or three times a second, even though the CPU is barely at 10%. I think turning off the scaling seemed to fix that, though I ran out of time just as I tried that to be sure.)
Renoise is really rock solid, fast, light-weight, powerful, Lua-scriptable, and really cheap compared to your typical commercial DAW, like Bitwig. I think I paid less than $80 for Renoise, compared to about $400 for Bitwig.
The tracker paradigm is very different to the piano-roll paradigm that most other DAWs use. If you can get used to the tracker way of doing things, which is very keyboard-centric (kind of like vim and emacs), then you could be very productive, if not you might be better off with a traditional DAW.
Finally, trackers are usually used for making electronic music, and might not be the best fit for other types of music, or for making or editing long recordings. You might be better off with something like Ardour or Bitwig for that.
http://kruhft.bandcamp.com/album/macro-2
All of it is mixed, played and recorded'live' with the pre-programmed tracks being mixed using an offboard midi controller.
I do find the pattern-based workflow a bit of a productivity killer though (I usually get stuck on perfecting the same 8/16 bar loop).
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 writing...
Works great.
This control panel app includes support for a PulseAudio-to-JACK bridge, which makes (if I remember correctly) PulseAudio a wireable source and sink in the connection graph while the server is running.
This has pretty much been the standard-issue software for composing and distributing drum patterns for Edinburgh's Beltane Fire Society drum crews for years - amused to see it crop up here :)
That said, it's a nice little tool if you're not willing to shell out for a DAW.
I've dreamed of doing something like that for awhile, but at the end of the day it's almost always easier to just reach for a self-contained DAW.
Separating each part of the composition process with specific applications.
Overtone - http://overtone.github.io/ Tidal - https://tidalcycles.org/
Perhaps those might be hooked into something you're already building?
bump for Tidal if you're looking for interesting ways to arrange sample playback: https://tidalcycles.org/
I'd recommend Ardour for more studio-oriented work: http://ardour.org/
Also, Ardour works with Alsa as backend.
edit: http://djtechtools.com/2012/01/12/bitwig-studio-announced-ab...
https://kruhft.bandcamp.com/album/listener
It's a pretty good piece of software.
The actual comparison is FL Studio - because LMMS started as a cheap-and-cheerful open source clone of FruityLoops, to the point where many FL Studio how-tos (particularly for the 3x Oscillator, sorry Triple Oscillator) also work for LMMS.
LMMS also imports pretty well from Hydrogen, apparently.
LMMS plus points: it costs $0, and it's open source! Minus point: it has only volunteer developers, who come and go; there's no support organisation.
LMMS is very easy to get started on and it's lots of fun. The Woolworths guitar of disco; cheap, cheerful, inadequate and readily available.
[The Woolworths guitar was cheap and helped punk rock along greatly; Pete Shelley from the Buzzcocks had one that he'd basically beaten to a plank.]
I would recommend looking at Pd (Pure Data), which, imho, is the open source version of Max/MSP, a very popular graphical programming language used for music composition as well as the creation of audio applications.
Also, have you seen https://www.reddit.com/r/Reaper/
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.
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.
Are you really using it for professional work or have seen anyone use it? And what are some features other DAWs can dream of; the ones you counted above?
You can activate 2 systems permanently, which is managed simply from the web UI. (revoke activations) Other systems can be activated temporarily with your email/id + pass on startup.
FWIW, the small team has been fantastic and responsive since the beginning. (I've been on the betas and helped develop some of the early controller scripts. check the community pages to see what we've done)
I got a NFR license for helping out early on, and ran into the activation limit initially. (testing on all platforms, etc...) I emailed them a few times to deactivate my current systems initially, then they added the option to their account management page.
If its a deal breaker, I suggest emailing them and seeing what they say. It wouldn't surprise me if they upped the limit or did something to help you out. They're an awesome group who really want to work with the community and users.
Not affiliated besides what I mentioned above, just a happy user. Best of luck, if you have any questions PM me or reply here if you think relevant to others :)
Checking in. My side-gig and paid hobby is live production, and Reaper has more than earned it's place in my toolbelt. I've recorded shows produced for sxsw showcases (not to mention two years touring as a FOH guy, and producing for a major political event on the east coast-guess what? I used Reaper for all of them) and made master mixes that ended up on CD's sold by national, headlining bands with Reaper.
I think you are horrendously mischaracterizing and underestimating the tool-and from reading your other comments to people providing you with substantial and verifiable feedback as to the capabilities of the software, extensibility, platform support, feature sets compared to more expensive DAWs, it appears you're doing so deliberately.
[0] https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/drum...
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.
More active package repositories such as kxstudio seem to resolve at least some of this friction.
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.
Here is the focusrite help page dealing with latency and what you must turn off for recording. https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207546515-Op...
It will also support JACK but for quickly getting up and running it's about the simplest DAW I've setup on Linux configuration wise.
Not open source but I give them lots of kudos for supporting Linux from the start.
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.
That page is "dissuade people from calling tech support", not the reality of how audio actually works on OS X.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-which-audio-inter...
yes its 2009 but it is still sound science.
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.
Stepping frame by frame through the video I took (https://youtu.be/IHmC-q_iPiE) at the point where I press the key to sound a note, there's a 4 to 5 frame latency until I can visually see the speaker membrane move, so that's about 33 to 41 milliseconds.
Bitwig is set to 64 samples (1.45 ms) latency.
Since Windows XP Windows and Audio Latency has not been an issue and both platforms require a lot of end user work to get lower and lower latency. The issue is really only significant for recording audio and not as much when doing live audio. Any modern platforms latency light years ahead of 2000 audio production.
The idea that Mac is better for audio or video because of the OS is marketing and not based on real life professional use of the platforms.
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 I suggest re-evaluating your assumptions.
The problem there, being a closed environment where the manufacturer dictates when the product must die, is rather the drivers life. If they don't update the driver your pricey gear turns into a doorstop overnight. Case in point: Tascam US122 audio interface. Under Linux I can still use it; far from being the best around but it works. Under Windows it became unusable when they stopped supporting it years ago.
Hang on, no way, you take one or the other. Aggregating devices adds a huge chunk of latency and, frankly, I don't think is that exciting a feature anyway. Maybe for your specific setup, but generally speaking you should buy gear that suits your needs, rather than try to cobble something together from existing devices.
Having used OSX and Win7 (on the same machine) I would agree CoreAudio is less hassle and definitely lower latency - IIRC, OSX reported just over half the latency of W7 on the same setup.
That said, I'm not sure what you think is going on with ASIO, since any class compliant USB audio interface has compatible drivers inherently..
As the other commentor said, Core Audio "just works" for low latency. MIDI is great as well. Windows still needs third party ASIO drivers.
If a USB MIDI controller gets unplugged during a set on Windows, I need to restart Ableton. On Mac, you just plug it back in and it picks up immediately, even the audio interface will do that.
> The issue is really only significant for recording audio and not as much when doing live audio.
What? Latency is a non-issue for recording audio, and A HUGE ISSUE for live usage. Any half-decent DAW supports latency compensation on non-realtime tracks. You can record a vocal track when every other instrument has 10s of seconds of latency, as long as your monitoring for the vocals has none. When playing live, every single track cannot have latency.
Edit, hell many of the best audio interfaces don't even support Windows as a platform.
Give this a read - https://www.presonus.com/community/Learn/The-Truth-About-Dig...
Live audio if you have above the human perception of latency you are in the realm of 20 or 30 ms.
> Edit, hell many of the best audio interfaces don't even support Windows as a platform.
What can I say marketing works and this perceived Mac superior creative types tool is believed by most people. In actual Professional world there are plenty of Windows based studios that won Emmy's, Oscars and Grammys.
In the situations where I have to do it--and it's less about "buying the gear that suits my needs," more "having to bash together other people's gear on a shoestring"--I find that aggregation ends up around 30ms, which is on the higher end of acceptable when monitoring in-ear. (To be specific--this is not for music but rather audio routing for video. Occasionally I'm on-site somewhere and need to be able to monkey up something a little faster than I'd like, you know?)
Trying to do that with ASIO at all is impossible. So it's a pretty big deal.
> That said, I'm not sure what you think is going on with ASIO, since any class compliant USB audio interface has compatible drivers inherently..
In theory, yes. In practice, I find ASIO a little unstable (my home setup uses Ableton on Windows as a live mixer through a TASCAM US-16x08, though I'll be going back to using a Mac when I get back my Mac mini from a friend). I have never had Core Audio kernel panic a machine, but I've had machines (in one memorable case, the same machine dual-booting a hackintoshed OS X and Windows) hard-lock as soon as I enabled ASIO on two different devices (my old TASCAM US-1200 and my a friend's 8i6).
It is not unusable, by any means, but for my purposes (again, live shows) predictability is a big plus.
I haven't done that kind of work, so for video/speech, fair enough. 30ms (on top of whatever's already there) is not really acceptable for a musical performance, though - the performer will be expending half their brainpower trying to mentally align what they hear through bone conduction vs in ear monitoring and adjusting their performance based on outdated/scrambled information. It's a really confusing experience - if you've ever seen that Japanese "speech jammer" device[0] you'll get some idea what I mean (although it uses much longer than ~30ms, that's still enough to mess with you).
Working in a pinch, it would make a useful and more stable tool than ASIO, though I run either analog or dedicated devices for any live work - I just don't trust computers that much - but I get that working with video means you might not have those kind of options. I can't say I've had many of the troubles I've heard about with ASIO to be honest, but I undeniably do enjoy working on OSX more anyway. This conversation reminds me how badly I need to revive my ML Hackintosh..
Please dude, look up latency compensation. You have zero idea what you're talking about and it's obvious.
> In actual Professional world there are plenty of Windows based studios that won Emmy's, Oscars and Grammys.
I don't believe I ever said otherwise. But to say Mac never outperforms Windows for audio is wrong. And to say Mac requires just as much setup work as Windows is a flat out lie.
> I don't believe I ever said otherwise. But to say Mac never outperforms Windows for audio is wrong. And to say Mac requires just as much setup work as Windows is a flat out lie.
Nope. Its actually a huge pain BUT most people don't really care or need to actually dig that deep.
https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/210...
https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207546515-Op...
Then you have the issue with your i/o in Macs with all your Desktop options that isn't a problem but all the laptops its a HUGE problem. I have no idea how people do audio with the i/o issues that Apple throw at you all the time. Thunderbolt anyone?
You are wrong about the need for proprietary ASIO drivers for all devices, or that many of the best audio interfaces don't support Windows.. One manufacturer is not "many" and while they are high range, it's definitely arguable whether they're the best.
Anyway, in my experience it's rarely the hardware itself that requires the majority of setup, and either way it's a once-off. Unless you're the kind of person who uses the same template for every recording session, in which case you have bigger problems than setup.
If you have a known constant output lag, a known constant input lag, but no lag in the monitor for just the track you're recording, it seems like the software has everything it needs to put back the performance exactly the way you recorded it (and to adjust the offset for the click).
Am I missing something?
My point latency doesn't really matter for most people recording. BUT if you get in that realm where you need to worry about it then its a PAIN no matter what your OS is. Apple isn't "superior" in audio recording just like it isn't in video and image manipulation. OS is more about people's feeling and attachment to their OS's company's marketing.
I think Apple has been dishonest and hostile to people so I don't like them as a company. You can't trust them not to throw the rug out from under your feet (Thunderbolt cost studios thousands and thousands of dollars). Lack of a new Mac Pro also is a HUGE issue for most video shops now. Their OS drives me nuts and really unreliable for me. Other people love it and I am fine with your opinion until they think everything else is garbage.