[LAU] Hydrogen questions

[Jeremy Jongepier]

On 12/28/2010 08:31 PM, Brent Busby wrote:
> My old MPC2000 (non-XL) is starting to act oddly, and it has got me
> thinking about whether I should even continue depending on the Akai
> hardware, which generates rock solid sequencer time, but is eventually
> going to be unmaintainable, and leave me with a lot of sequences and
> sample libraries in various odd proprietary formats.
>
> So while I'm working on getting my MPC working again, I'm also checking
> into the possibility of replacing its usefulness with a mixture of
> Hydrogen, Jack, Linuxsampler, and Ardour. There are a few questions though:
>
> 1) This is probably pretty basic, but...can you send each
> drum/instrument in a Hydrogen kit out a different physical audio
> output in Jack? My whole setup is very much based on physical
> hardware -- a real mixer board, real rack effects, etc. I haven't
> heard a Ladspa plugin yet that offered EQ that really satisfied me
> much, and I'm used to being able to do EQ on my mixer from the 10
> outputs of my MPC, individually, per track, and also using rack
> effects from the effects loops and a real hardware patchbay. I could
> keep doing that if I can send individual Hydrogen tracks out to audio
> outputs on my RME Multiface. I could also add more outputs as
> needed. It'd be ideal if you could just route individual tracks to
> hardware outputs via Jack.
>

A bit late and superfluous maybe but Hydrogen can be set up to have per 
instrument JACK outputs. If you then use it with a mixer you could apply 
real-time effects if you'd like to. Hydrogen can load LADSPA plugins 
too, but if you use it with Qtractor or Ardour for example you can use a 
wider range of plugin frameworks.

> 3) Also, all the discussion of entering rhythms in the documentation
> seemed to involve using the QWERTY keyboard, which obviously isn't
> going to be velocity-sensitive. Is there a way to have an outboard
> synthesizer keyboard (or even better, my Simmons drumset with Roland
> PM16 pad-to-midi) play or sequence Hydrogen patterns via midi, with
> full velocity sensitivity? QWERTY keyboard is an awful way to have
> to sequence.
>

Yes, this is possible. Hydrogen has a MIDI input port and you can assign 
MIDI channels to the different instruments.

Best,

Jeremy