Hydrogen on Raspberry Pi 400

[dfkettle]

Hi!

I've just installed Hydrogen v1.0.1 on a Raspberry Pi 400 running Raspberry Pi OS. When I start Hydrogen, I get an error message "Error starting audio driver". So I went into Preferences and tried each of the options (Jack, ALSA, PortAudio and PulseAudio), but I get the same error for all of them. I'm using a Behringer UCA222 as my audio interface, which Audacity and Ardour both recognize, but Hydrogen doesn't seem to.

I know this isn't the latest version of Hydrogen, but it seems to be the latest that's available through the default respositories for the Raspberry Pi OS. Is this an issue with older versions of Hydrogen? I haven't tried downloading the latest version from Github, which I guess I'd have to compile myself. But if it will solve the problem, I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

[theGreatWhiteShark]

Hey @dfkettle,

Is this an issue with older versions of Hydrogen?

Depends on the audio driver you are using. In terms of PortAudio there have been indeed a number of improvements.

Could you attach the debug log generated when starting Hydrogen in the terminal using hydrogen -VDebug and selecting the audio driver one after another in the Preferences? (in v1.0.1 you need at least to close the Preferences dialog in order for your selection to take effect. Only newer versions support restarting it right from within the dialog).

Could you also attach the output of the following commands jack_control dp, pactl info, and aplay -L?

[dfkettle]

Thanks. I'd forgotten that restarting the audio while you're still in Preferences doesn't work. When I selected ALSA and closed the Preferences window, it restarted without error. I don't know why the other three aren't working, but as long as one of them works, I don't really care.

[dfkettle]

Yes, it did work! All options, including Auto (except for Jack), are working. Some day I might try installing Jack, but so far I haven't had any need for it, and it seems a little complicated to set up.

When you say you got the same error with v1.0.1, was that on a RPi? Or does the problem exist for all Linux devices?

BTW, I just downloaded the file 'hydrogen-1.1.1.tar.gz' and unzipped it. I'm not sure how to replace my existing install of v1.0.1 without compiling it from scratch. Is there an easy way to do that?

Thanks for your help!

[theGreatWhiteShark]

When you say you got the same error with v1.0.1, was that on a RPi? Or does the problem exist for all Linux devices?

It seems to not be limited to RPis. I was using my regular laptop with all possible audio drivers being set up properly. Seems like we fixed more stuff during the past two years than I can recall :D

BTW, I just downloaded the file 'hydrogen-1.1.1.tar.gz' and unzipped it. I'm not sure how to replace my existing install of v1.0.1 without compiling it from scratch. Is there an easy way to do that?

On Linux you, unfortunately, have to compile the code yourself. Only for macOS and Windows we ship binaries (mostly due to the abundance of Linux distributions).

Is there an easy way to do that?

AFAIK Raspbian is based on Debian and in general it should be enough to copy&paste the code snippets from INSTALL.md

[cme]

AFAIK Raspbian is based on Debian and in general it should be enough to copy&paste the code snippets from INSTALL.md

Can confirm -- I regularly build and run on a RPi 4 with Raspbian. There might be some missing package dependencies that I've installed that weren't in the list, but the method works!

[dfkettle]

On Linux you, unfortunately, have to compile the code yourself. Only for macOS and Windows we ship binaries (mostly due to the abundance of Linux distributions).

But I didn't have to compile it. There was a binary in the tar file. Maybe I was just lucky because it seems to work.

[cme]

But I didn't have to compile it. There was a binary in the tar file. Maybe I was just lucky because it seems to work.

...did a binary from my own raspi 4 escape into the tarball somehow? 🤣 I don't think so... that's very odd though.