Follow-up - Midi controllers!

Of course, I didn't quite do what I planned to do. This is what I have done, though:

• I've recorded song ideas using Hydrogen, Ardour and Qsynth. Nothing new or exciting here, except maybe for some LV2 plugins that I've tried. I might get back to them in another blog post.
  
• I've tried Rakarrack a bit. There are some horrid presets on there, but there are also some nice ones and I think this app might come in handy later on.
  
• I have bought an AKAI MPK mini!
• I've learned how to map MIDI control signals to seq24, to toggle loops (with the help of this thread and this chart of MIDI status codes). I've also learned how to map midi signals in Sooperlooper, which is considerably easier.
  
• I've learned how to route my "vintage" Nobels MF-2 midi foot controller to seq24 and Sooperlooper using a2jmidid and Patchage (see this page). One step closer to using my PC as a loop station!
• I have finally donated some money to the Ardour project. I'll donate to Hydrogen as well.
  

I might write in more detail later about my midi controllers and how to map them to seq24, Sooperlooper and so on.

I am also trying out Ableton Live again (in Windows, although it reportedly works with Wine). At this point, I need to figure out a workflow that works for me, no matter what platform - and although I think Live is fantastic, perhaps Linux will still be my primary choice. After all effort I've put into it, I feel quite at home with it and I know my preferred applications quite well. Setting things up is happily no longer such an issue. We'll see where it goes...

P.S. One thing I'd like to investigate is how Zynaddsubfx actually works (ie. how to customize instruments in detail) and why it makes noise that sounds like xruns when there are none (it was discussed in this old thread, also here with what looks like a possible solution - OK, so maybe there are still things that need to be tinkered with).

Hydrogen drum kits, audio latency, jack crashing

I've been recording a bit in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) using Ardour and Hydrogen, a splendid drum machine / sequencer. The audio interface is, as I have mentioned, an Edirol FA-66.

Hydrogen drum kits
It's been a while since I last checked the list of Hydrogen drum kits, so I was pleased to see that there are more than the few I knew of. You can find them here:

Officially distributed drumkits
A blog post with a bunch of different kits
Asma Davul, a turkish drum

The blog post above actually links to a drum kit I made called Aqoustic. It was a first attempt, using samples of a friend's drums. Not very high quality. The blogger calls it "another homemade jobby". Urban Dictionary tells me "jobby" is scottish for poo. Fair enough!

Audio latency
I have been using jack in real time mode with a buffer size of 512kb.

One thing I've noticed that's different from when I recorded with a mere SoundBlaster Live card on my desktop computer is that the latency between different programs seems to be gone. When syncinc Ardour and Hydrogen for recording drums, I don't have to trim the resulting audio region, which I needed to do before because of the lag.

When recording from an external source - in this case: electric guitar through a Boss ME-50 - the latency varies. Sometimes I seem to get minimal latency, again with no need to trim the recorded audio. Curiously, when I turn up the monitor mix knob on the FA-66 to hear what I play while I record, there is a noticeable latency.

Jack server crashing
After a while of doing takes on several tracks, the jack server crashed. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Qjackctl froze and Ardour reported that the connection to jack was lost. When trying to restart it, I got an error message (which I will paste here later). This latter error was resolved by resetting the firewire bus using a program called gscanbus and then starting jack. However, it didn't take long before jack crashed again. I will have to find out what causes this problem. I have yet to try different buffer settings, maybe that will give me something.

I hope it's not a hardware issue. I have decided to buy the FA-66, although I haven't been able to test it first as much as I had hoped to. I have done little recording with Ableton Live in Windows, and I didn't notice any anomalies then. This should mean that my problems in Linux are solvable.