Hydrogen to Ardour without JACK

#1

Is there any way to have Ardour using ALSA (well Pipewire now I think) instead of Jack and still route MIDI output of some other program into it?

#2

ALSA and Pipewire are very different. Pipewire is more like JACK, and in fact implements the same API, so you should be able to use Pipewire to route between Hydrogen and Ardour.

#3

If you have explicitly selected ALSA as the Ardour Audio backend then no…

If you have PipeWire without ‘old JACK’ on your system and select JACK as the Ardour backend then…maybe…?

It very much depends on what Distro you are using and if they have taken the steps to properly make ‘pipewire-jack’ appear as regular JACK…

What Distro and what version of PipeWire are you using?

#4

Yeah I can do it in JACK mode from Ardour through Pipewire, but I have been using the ALSA backend as its better for recording with realtime I thought.

#5

ALSA is often the best option since it connects directly to the Audio hardware and bypasses any other sound servers BUT there’s the rub, it doesn’t allow for interconnecting any other Audio applications at the same time, you need JACK or PW for that.

#6

Some comments from me w.r.t. Ardour and Hydrogen.
Originally I used to run that combination, too.
Eventually I migrated to drums inside Ardour without Hydrogen.

  1. With H2 and Ardour I had issues at tempo changes. Did not work
  2. I love having a single database for everything.
  3. Eventually I found programing the drums in Ardour much more convenient. Yes, once I got used to it, I found it very flexible.
  4. With LSP sampler I can load all H2 drumkits.
    But mostly I use the AVL drumkits. And just recently some Ugritone drum kits
  5. Don’t have to mess around with Jack and friends, just use ALSA

Will never go back. My 2 cents

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#7

Not really better, just much easier to configure properly.

#8

And there is also drumlabooh, which can load H2 drumkits too.

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