[linux-audio-user] New install, SuSE

[Rocco]

dsevans at berndtgroup.net wrote:
> I started up jackd and got hydrogen to work. thanks.

Dave,

As mentioned prior, you may want to turn off the aRts server. From what 
I understand, it's a sound server that compensates up for any sound card 
that doesn't allow 2 sounds to be played at the same time. aRts is 
probly not nessesay. Yet... it could (possibly) introduce latency (and 
who knows what else).

With SuSE/KDE, it's running by default. To disable it, go to...

--> Control Center --> Sound & Multimedia --> Sound System --> (un)check 
the option "Start aRts sound server on KDE startup"

If you really want to be safe, reboot to make sure it's off.

Hydrogen is very nice, but I had certain issues with it, so I went with 
a much "cleaner" situation. If I'm not mistaken, I don't think that the 
version of Hydrogen that comes with SuSE 9.0 allows for any "real time" 
inputting of notes. I think you only have the option of inputting notes 
with a mouse. If I'm wrong, then please correct me. But if not, then you 
have to connect it up to another midi program. This is (not) uncommon 
practice in the linux/audio world to use programs together like this. It 
just seems too "kludgy" to hook a "full-blown" program up to another 
"full-blown" program like this. So what I did was to install "simsam"...
Home Page...
http://simsam.sourceforge.net/

It allows you to load sound samples and assign them to any key(s) on 
your midi keyboard. It's much less "kludgy" than using a full blown 
program like Hydrogen. And unlike (some) programs, you don't have to do 
anything special to get it to show up in the "kaconnect" window. Just 
type "simsam" in a shell... start kaconnect and hook it up to a midi 
sequencer program or your midi keyboard or whatever...

Here's the irony... if you want some great sounding sound samples, find 
the directory were Hydrogen keeps it's sound samples ("drum kits" are 
*one* compressed file full of samples). You can right click on them in 
KDE and choose the "extract here" option. From what I remember, that 
creates a file that needs to (also) be extracted. And I believe that 
leaves a folder of drum samples at that location.

Have fun...
Rocco