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: