I’ve been trying to figure out why I can’t loop a range. One of the replies on this thread from August 2023 mentioned that it’s not possible to loop with JACK transport mode. I like JACK transport mode for syncing with Hydrogen, and it’ll be a bummer if I can’t do both that and looping. Is looping with JACK transport still impossible? Are there any plans to add this, or is there some technical problem that makes this unlikely to happen any time soon?
It is not possible to implement in a way that works correctly.
While multi-application setups with JACK are part of the joy of JACK, the truth is that one of the major reasons that JACK was written was because Linux didn’t have (a) a suitable audio/MIDI plugin API and (b) enough plugins. Now that we have both of those things, the appeal of multi-application setups has diminished for many people.
It continues to amaze me that nobody has successfully transformed hydrogen into a plugin.
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Ah, bummer. Thanks for the reply.
Anyone have recommendations for how I could change my workflow? Is there a consensus on drum plugins that are closest to the UI of Hydrogen?
I’ve found it simplest to hold off on recording Hydrogen’s output into an Ardour track for as long as possible and rely on JACK to keep the drums synced while I record other instruments. That gives me freedom to make changes to the drums frequently and not need to replace the track in Ardour each time. But if there’s some good alternative that’ll let me get off JACK transport and use loops, I’m all ears. I’m very new to production so perhaps there’s something obvious that I’m missing.
I stood exactly at the same spot years ago when I tried to use Hydrogen and Ardour with varying tempo. That did not work for me and I had to change my workflow.
I decided to use the Avl drum plugins and Ardours builtin MIDI facilities.
I never went back.
EDIT:
If it’s for the sounds of Hydrogen there are plugins available to load them
For repetive pattern I can copy regions. Theres a mode in Ardour so that all copies share the same data. Changing one region changes all copies
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Another pretty new option is Drumlabooh, it will load Hydrogen kits directly and also SFZ Files and the developer has also created a lot of drumkits in his own format:
I’ve tried playing around with plugins and they just can’t match Hydrogen’s UI for me. It’s too convenient being able to define patterns and then choose which patterns apply measure by measure with a single click. @paul , would you accept a patch with a very crude JACK timebase loop mode? What I’m imagining is the user defines a loop range that encompasses a punch in-punch out range and enables punch in, out, and loop. When the playhead reaches the loop end marker, it’s punched out of recording, so can be sent back to the loop start marker and recording re-enabled. That seems to incur some lag in JACK transport mode, so in practice it’d be best to have a noticeable of delay between loop start and punch in.
Not ideal, but 0 key presses is much better than the four I’m using right now to get the same functionality (stop and auto-return, shift-R to enable recording again, play).
It probably won’t help you much, but back in the day when I was using Hydrogen, my workaround for this issue was to use the MusE sequencer. It can actually loop with Jack transport, although not always seamlessly. Setting the loop in MusE made both Hydrogen and Ardour to follow. Kind of felt like overkill, but I used MusE for MIDI work anyway. These days I’ve switched to Ardour completely. So much less hassle and MIDI in Ardour improved vastly. Still missing some MusE features, though.
You can copy most of hydrogen already within ardour using the cue page.
- Load your drum beat into a slot
- Stop it from looping by selecting none in the Follow option drop down.
- Use midi learn to assign a note or cc event to trigger it.
- Use a midi track as you use the Hydrogen arrange.
This will be an even better replacement when editing clips in the slot is released.
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