I have tried Hydrogen some time ago when I tried to build a linux audio workstation with Jack and Ardour.
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.
EZDrummer, and the other examples are a different beast. Those are sample based drum plugins. They are made to sound like real acoustic drums. They are great and wonderful.
This is a pastern based drum machine for non-acoustic sounding drums (Usually). So you are comparing two different tools.
EZDrummer actually is a pattern+sample based drum machine like Hydrogen, while Studio Drummer uses pre-recorded audio patterns which could be wonderful to listen to but are very limiting in my opinion, even if played by world class drummers.
> 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.
Slightly off-topic, but does Bitwig have a restrictive licensing scheme that makes reinstallation cumbersome? I love FL Studio because it doesn't have a limit on number of installations. As a geek, I change my main machine often, and it's so convenient to install FL Studio if I get an itch to bang something out, and not to worry about how many activations I've used up.
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.
There are restrictions, but they're quite flexible. I have a main PC and a couple laptops I switch between, and have no issues.
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 :)
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. The self-service activation manager sounds like a step up from Ableton. Still not as great as FL Studio's free-wheelin' attitude, but better.
I don't care what OS your on. When you start talking about latency it is all a nightmare. If latency isn't an issue then Pulse Audio works totally fine.
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.
Likewise, none of my audio devices have required special drivers for Mac, and I can easily get 3ms latency by just plugging it in and making sure buffer size it at a minimum. I produced on Windows forever and didn't believe there would have been a noticeable difference switching to OSX.
I then question your need for low latency? OS X and MacOS requires just as much work to get to the lowest latency and your handicapped if your have an Apple laptop. Your latency will be about the same as PusleAudio on Linux if you use default OS X MacOS settings. In most real world settings Windows will get a lower latency mostly due to better hardware on a Professional setup compared to the less then top end audio of Apple. Apple machine require a lot of engineering in the software to achieve low latency.
I haven't used Hydrogen yet but it seems to be much more than just a drum synth/simulator, such as the ones you referenced as comparison (Studio Drummer, EZDrummer, etc).
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 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).
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.
After hearing some oldschool electronica my 9-year old asked me about drum machines. Is there a good kid-friendly one you can recommend for win or android?
Check out the Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators [0], so much fun to play with. I enjoy messing around with chiptunes on my PO-20 Arcade far more than I ever did in software.
The PO-12 [1] and PO-32 [2] (if you can find one) are the two drum machines in that line up.
Adding to the suggestions here, there's another benefit to playing with hardware.
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.
Try Figure (originally by Propellerhead). It's not strictly a drum machine but it's fun to explore both from a musical and an user-interface aspect. Available for iOS and Windows.
cheap hardware (you'll probably want velocity sensitive pads) Teenage Eng Rhythm, Korg KR mini and Volca Beats, the Alesis sr 16/18, Akai makes seemingly dozens of beat makers/sequencer/samplers, others from Arturia, boss, the Roland tr09 recreation, etc.
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
Having used both REAPER and Pro Tools professionally, my opinion is that REAPER is not basic at all -- it has every feature I have needed in a DAW, it's easy to use (for me, at least) and performs better than Pro Tools, at a far lower cost. It is one of my favorite pieces of commercial software.
Cost is low but 3rd party ecosystem including plugins is weak. It s like notepad++ of programming editors or winamp of music players. Effective, cheap, non innovative Yet OK.
I've only used Ableton, FL and Reason, so there could be something I'm missing, but doesn't Reaper support vsts? How could the ecosystem for plugins possibly be weak?
VST/3/AU/DX, and it supports scripting your own in JS as well. Unless they're upset about not having LADSPA or Nyquist, I can't imagine what else they'd be referring to that isn't proprietary AVID garbage.
REAPER's feature set is huge, it's also one of the most customizable DAWs I've used. I know this kind of thing is pretty subjective, but even then, there is no way I could possibly call it "basic" compared to the most popular DAWs out there.
It's effective, cheap but non innovative and a me too product. I bet it won't exist in 10 years in DAW business. It's feature set is a "me too" set of everything which exists with minimal innovative features on top.
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.
> I bet it won't exist in 10 years in DAW business.
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.
I m referring to GP comment saying he keeps Windows just for Reaper and you validate my point. And I m talking about the next 10 years obviously. Reaper is a clean, neat, easy to use DAW with many features for beginner and intermediate user. It s a very well written piece of software with a fair price.
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?
> 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.
Check out LMMS (Let's Make Music). It's like Ableton for Linux and already has VST's like Hydrogen, etc. built into the software itself: https://lmms.io/
It's actually like FL Studio for Linux as it is pretty much a carbon copy. If you want to draw a direct comparison of "Ableton for Linux" then the logical choice is Bitwig, which is quite frankly "Ableton for Linux" since all of the original Ableton developers left to start Bitwig and the interface is a 100% copy of the original.
I'm a happy LMMS user of many years, but "It's like Ableton" is somewhere between wrong and not-even-wrong. It doesn't have anything like the feature set nor the basic paradigm of Ableton, and anyone trying LMMS on this basis will be seriously disappointed.
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 like LMMS but the funny thing about it is that some of the essential features (such as extrrnal VSTs) don't work on Linux (unless you set it up on wine, which has it's own issues).
I used LMMS for Windows in Wine for ages. Now using on Ubuntu 16.04 compiled from source linking to libwine. Works fine, I'm not at all clear on what bit of Linux use is supposed to be hard.
For anyone interested in checking the state of Linux and Free/OS software for music making I strongly recommend checking out: http://libremusicproduction.com/
There have been great improvements on the latest years in regard to plugin availability and support for professional workflows/devices that might be overlooked.
Do you happen to have a good reference on using the Pi3 for audio? I spent a lot of Saturday trying to make mine do some stuff, and while a lot of the technical snafus were the usual sort, I did end up burning a lot of time googling around until I finally found someone who suggested turning off CPU performance scaling. Which was a forehead slap moment for me after that, but, still, it'd be nice if there was somewhere I could go that had that stuff more laid out.
(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.)
You may want to check out some of the posts at https://autostatic.com/ and the forums for zynthian https://discourse.zynthian.org/ . If memory serves both sites focused on some of the version 2 revisions of the Pi, but they may also help with your board as well.
It would be nice if Ubuntu pruned dead / barely working products from their repos. There's an astonishing number of frustratingly bad audio apps in their main repo.
I'd say that's part of their issue, the other side is that they don't seem to track the development of projects all that well. In some cases this simply is shipping old versions with known and long fixed bugs and in other cases they miss the evolution of various projects as maintainers change over. The latter case includes some abandoned/nearly-abandoned standalone tools getting converted to plugins (generally LV2) and receiving more active development.
More active package repositories such as kxstudio seem to resolve at least some of this friction.
I think this has to with community. The Arch community moves pretty fast and forces users to go look up packages online and comment/vote on their state which results in packages being both promoted to default repos and getting thrown out of the default repos.
I used Hydrogen a few years ago to build a tutorial of [doumbek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblet_drum) patterns. It was too difficult to get it to sound like a human was drumming, but for teaching the basic patterns and getting the timing exactly right, it was pretty good.
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.
Renoise is great, especially for breakbeat/jungle drum programming. Just load up your break of choice, put in some slice markers (or play it with offset commands like on old trackers), and you're set.
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).
The interface reminds me a lot of FL Studio (which I currently use on Ubuntu via Wine, works great). Hydrogen looks interesting, but I think most DAWs simply have almost all of these features and far more. That being said, this looks to be FOSS, which I really admire. I'll have to check this out after work.
Most DAWS might have drum machines but most serious users end up using a third party product. The built-in ones are undeniably good but thinks like Kontact/EZDrummer etc. are on another level.
Never used Kontact or EZ Drummer, but seems like it would be hard to beat Ableton Live Suite's combo of drumracks and stacking effects per drum sample... Do you have experience with both? Any reason I should look into the former when I've invested in the latter?
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...
I use Ableton and Logic and their built-in drum software often. They're both very good. When you want to program super real sounding drums EZDrummer and especially Kontact are unbeatable (and as another comment mentioned Kontact has libraries for much more than just drums). For me the reason I like contact is that the mixing interface for each element in the kit is really easy to use and tweak. Besides that the samples are phenomenal. Another option that may be more relevant to you is NI Battery [0]. Personally I just like to experiment with different options as I find that the simple fact of working in a different UI will result in different creative output.
Thanks for the comment- I was hoping to hear about why you prefer using a 3rd party drum machine in a DAW. For the time being, I record or find all of my samples so I'm not particularly attracted to the kits. The interface looks great however. I probably won't use it anytime soon, but it does appear to be quite powerful.
Battery would be a closer competitor to Ableton's Drum Rack. It also included gigs of samples from 808, 909 to heavily processed sounds and percussion. The included samples are about equal in quality to Ableton's, but Battery includes built-in FX and routing for each sample. So you no longer need to add a compressor to each sample, and an EQ, etc. It's already there, as well as effects like emulations of older sampler hardware. The downside to Battery being that it's more cumbersome to add effects which aren't already included (you need to route them to a separate output, and depending on your DAW process it on a new track).
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.
Kontakt is pretty cool, not just for drum machines but any samples. For example, the NI orchestra samples are absolutely amazing. For drums it's just another sampler, you're probably better off sticking with Drum Rack unless you want the specific samples offer d by Kontakt.
Pulseaudio should not even be involved, as the program do not require it. But then it keeps inserting itself into the "conversation" by hijacking any connection to and from Alsa...
Do you use an audio interface? What have you found is supported well by Linux? Saffire Pro 24 + Addictive Drums + Logic is what is really keeping me tied to macOS at home.
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 brings me way back. I used to play drums, and I used Hydrogen to help with drums patterns practice. I translated the manual and tutorial in French back in 2004, and 13 years later my name is still there in the changelog :)
Beta versions work on Windows too, although they're a little buggy.
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 :)
I've made a bunch of stuff with Hydrogen. I really like it and it's more stable (as in, does not crash all the time) than it used to be. It has its limitations, but in general I am easily able to create the sounds I want with it.
I have heard a lot of good stuff about DrumGizmo[0] lately, it has a very active development as well. Havent had the oppurtunity to try it out yet. But I have recently heard people moving from Hydrogen to DrumGizmo.
I've checked out Hydrogen a few times, but have been turned off by clunkiness in the UI each time. I'd rather use an web based one for quick one offs or just boot up my DAW for something more in depth.
That said, it's a nice little tool if you're not willing to shell out for a DAW.
Thanks! I'm aware of super collider and it is cool. However i'm not interested in real-time. I have been generating midi patterns and rendering audio server-side over many hours. I've started hand rolling a system to play drum samples from generated patterns. It would be nice if i could find something already built.
Maybe a music-oriented programming language like Chuck, Supercollider, or Pd?
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.
everyone on Instagram puts music tracks to their videos. they could be ironing their clothes but they will attack a hip-hop track our country music tune and get 10000 views quickly
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.