[Ardour-Users] Ardour and Hydrogen (not) syncing

[Alf Haakon Pietruszka Lund]

Hello list,

I'm Running Ubuntu studio 18.04 with Ardour 5.12 and Hydrogen 0.9.7 as
per default installation.

So far when working with these programs together I always started out
with a drum pattern and made the other parts fit around that. That was
working fine and I never gave any thought to Hydrogen's understanding of
meter and measure.

This time though, I started with a simple bass figure in 8/8 (80 bpm)
that I looped to compose a drumpattern to fit. A few variations of the
bass figure, and a few variations of the drum pattern.

The bass figure is two bars long, so it made sense (to me) to have
Hydrogen set to size 16 / resolution 16. When played together one loop
and one pattern at a time, they sounded in sync...

However!

In Ardour, the bass figure starts at bar number 5. In Hydrogen it starts
in the middle of the fifth. Go figure...

Both programs are told to use Jack for syncing. When both programs
report time = 22.5 s, Ardour says bar number 8 beat 5 while the
Hydrogen arrow points at somewhere close to the start of bar 6.

Does anyone in list feel up to helping out?

Regards,
Alf

[Lorenzo Sutton]

Hi,

Post by Alf Haakon Pietruszka Lund
Hello list,
I'm Running Ubuntu studio 18.04 with Ardour 5.12 and Hydrogen 0.9.7 as
per default installation.
So far when working with these programs together I always started out
with a drum pattern and made the other parts fit around that. That was
working fine and I never gave any thought to Hydrogen's understanding of
meter and measure.
This time though, I started with a simple bass figure in 8/8 (80 bpm)
that I looped to compose a drumpattern to fit. A few variations of the
bass figure, and a few variations of the drum pattern.
The bass figure is two bars long, so it made sense (to me) to have
Hydrogen set to size 16 / resolution 16. When played together one loop
and one pattern at a time, they sounded in sync...

What BPM do you set in hydrogen? I don't think hydrogen has the notion
of meters different than crotchet at the denominator (i.e. x/4).
So if in Ardour you set the meter to 8/8 and the tempo at 80 BPM you
probably need to set the tempo in hydrogen to 160 BPM in hydrogen to get
a perfect sync (if I understand correctly your set-up).

Lorenzo.

[Alf Haakon Pietruszka Lund]

Post by Lorenzo Sutton

Post by Alf Haakon Pietruszka Lund
The bass figure is two bars long, so it made sense (to me) to have
Hydrogen set to size 16 / resolution 16. When played together one loop
and one pattern at a time, they sounded in sync...

What BPM do you set in hydrogen? I don't think hydrogen has the notion
of meters different than crotchet at the denominator (i.e. x/4).
So if in Ardour you set the meter to 8/8 and the tempo at 80 BPM you
probably need to set the tempo in hydrogen to 160 BPM in hydrogen to get
a perfect sync (if I understand correctly your set-up).

Thanks for chiming in!

'Unfortunately' Hydrogen respects Jack and Ardours tempo of 80 bpm, if I
change it manually to 160 it reverts back to 80 as soon as I start playback.

It turns out if I tell Ardour the song is 4/4 and create new patterns in
Hydrogen 'Size 8' and 'Resolution whatever' the programs are counting
bars the same way.

Hydrogen also manages to count correctly if time signature is set to
8/4, so it seems you are spot on that Hydrogen NEED the crotchet to
function properly.

While I can live with it for now, from Hydrogen it seems I can't get no
satisfaction...

Best regards,
Alf