Multiple outputs for Hydrogen
I only just discovered that you can have multiple outputs from Hydrogen instead of using a simple stereo output. This means that in Ardour, you can have a different track for each drum, i.e. separate tracks for the snare, and kick drum. You might be asking: ¨What on earth is the point of that?!¨ Well… this provides versatility when mixing down and mastering your final song. Often when you adjusting the volume levels of drums without other instruments, you will get it wrong. If you recorded your drums using a stereo input, you have little control, but if you record with multiple tracks you can edit each drum´s volume at any time. i.e. your toms can be brought up whilst your cymbals are pushed down.
This can be done in Hydrogen as follows. Go to File, Preferences select Audio System and click the box which says: Enable Track Outputs. If you now go to the connect tab in JACK, you will see many outputs under the Hydrogen heading. Each output represents an instrument in Hydrogen and can be connected to the track inputs of Ardour. My advice is that you pan all your hydrogen instruments to one side (i.e. left), and connect them to Ardour as mono tracks. Do all your panning in Ardour because this saves on processing power and RAM.
Other posts you might find interesting:
How to make a Hydrogen Drumkit
Pimp my Beats
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Hydrogen Drumkits



February 18th, 2008 at 9:37 PM
That is an awesome tip. Thank you!
February 19th, 2008 at 6:17 PM
It’s only a pleasure. Just make sure your computer is decent enough to handle it, otherwise it is better to use stereo tracks.
later
Brian
August 6th, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Thats the shit right here. Thanks.
August 6th, 2008 at 11:21 AM
It’s a pleasure, I aim to please :)
Later,
Brian
September 8th, 2008 at 4:38 PM
Brian,
Good blog. A lot of what you’re covering are things I’ve stumbled through myself (e.g. multiple outputs in Hydrogen to Ardour… and had questioned what panning strategy to use! Great advice too. Cheers,
JK
September 9th, 2008 at 3:42 PM
Hey Jonathanku,
Thanks for the awesome feedback, I’m glad you found these posts useful. Please ask if you have any further questions and I will do my best to help.
Later,
Brian
May 14th, 2009 at 5:31 PM
What a great feature. Thank you so much!
June 11th, 2009 at 1:00 PM
It’s a pity it doesn’t work under Windows. To the same effect, I must select one instrument at a time in the mixer (click on “solo”) and export the song as a wave file. 32 times to get the full drumkit ! !
It is a véry good idea though, as I always have the need of a different reverb or tone control over different drums, into the final mixing.
I might move into ardour and Linux soon.
Thanks for your very good job here !
June 12th, 2009 at 10:47 PM
Hey J. Huber,
Thanks for the feedback. That sounds like a pretty frustrating exercise you’re going through there :).
I know moving to Linux can be quite daunting – it was for me. But I find that Ubuntu Studio has been the perfect flavour for me because it is very much a point-and-click solution and it comes with most of the software you need pre-installed. Try using it with a dual-boot into Windows and see how it goes…
Later,
Brian
July 28th, 2009 at 8:36 AM
Hey Brian,
Just recently made the switch from Windows…
I was hoping this could happen; one thing I hated about Pro Tools was the stereo input from re-wire. Unfortunately the option “Enable Track Outputs” is grayed out in the preferences dialog box….ideas…?
Hope you’ve seen this on before.
Rock n Roll,
Ryan
July 28th, 2009 at 7:10 PM
Hey Ryan,
Thanks for the feedback. I haven’t seen it before but I have a theory… Hydrogen can operate in two ways: either through JACK or straight through your soundcard. You need to run through JACK to get multiple outputs. You probably have JACK open, but Hydrogen is running through your soundcard. Always start JACK before Hydrogen and check that it is running through JACK. There is a button on the Hydrogen transport that allows you to switch between JACK and the soundcard. Give it a try and let me know what happens.
Later,
Brian
July 30th, 2009 at 7:14 AM
Hey Brian,
I pretty much start Jack as soon as i boot up my machine so that’s not it. Checked all my routing over a few times but still no go. I’m going to install Jaunty after i finish some back-up in Hardy, maybe that will help my machine. I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for the kick ass website by the way!
Rock n Roll,
Ryan