Thursday, July 7, 2011

Jack_session support for Hydrogen

Linux audio is a true adventure.  Just when you think you have seen it all some other app pops up and blows you away ...  at least sometimes.  In case it doesn't you just move on and continue your quest for something that does.

So many choices, soooo many different apps.  Pretty much like on Mac, only cheaper, right ?  Not really.
There are a few things that bug me in Linux audio and one of them is session management.
Session management is the ability to save/restore all your running audio apps at once, in other words your 'session'.

An example :
a typical setup might look something like this :
- Ardour for recording
- some FX plugins
- some softsynths
- Hydrogen (what else ;-)
- an audio interface + mic for recording vocals/guitar.

To set all of this up i'm guessing you will need about 10-20min : starting the apps, creating tracks in Ardour, making the jack routings, adding FX plugins, tweaking synth settings, messing with the midi settings ...

But what do you do when it's time to go to bed ?
- Logic : save your song.  done.
- Linux : write down the routings/settings you used.  Save the settings for all of your softsynths, Ardour, Hydrogen ... so you can rebuild your setup tomorrow and continue your work ?

This is where session management comes in, think of it as "the one app to rule them all" 
A Session management app provides a 'one-click-saves/restores-all' button, and voila : done !

As always in Linux there are several session manager apps available that come in several different forms, do different things, in different ways and they don't necessarily do everything well.

I'll go over the options in a next post.

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