Chapter 17. OSC API

Chapter 17. OSC API
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Table of Contents

17.2.1. Syntax
17.2.2. All Commands

Open Sound Control (OSC) is a protocol for communication among programs, computers, and hardware, like synthesizers or multimedia devices, via networking protocols such as UDP or TCP. It can be thought of as a replacement for the MIDI protocol with rich benefits, like supporting symbolic and high-resolution numerical argument data, providing an URL-style naming scheme in combination with a pattern matching language, and allowing to bundle messages for a better handling of timing and simultaneous processing.

17.1. Basics

Hydrogen is able to receive and send OSC messages. This allows you to control it using various devices, like hardware OSC controllers, smartphones, tablets, or any PC. For Linux-based systems you can use or test these interactions using the command line program oscsend.

$ oscsend localhost 9000 /Hydrogen/NEW_SONG s /tmp/new.h2song

	Note
	To enable OSC support in Hydrogen, open the OSC tab in the Preferences dialog. Make sure that the "Enable OSC support" checkbox is activated, otherwise Hydrogen will not listen for incoming OSC messages.

	Tip
	Hydrogen's port number defaults to `9000` for historical reasons. Since this is also the number used in the coding examples provided by liblo package, you may encounter other applications trying to register the same port (which is not possible). In order to avoid hiccups in your audio setup, it's advised to set a different default port in such cases.

	Warning
oscsend should only be used for sparse interactive testing and control via a command-line. Using it in scripts is not recommended since every time it sends a command it will registers a new client at the OSC server. If the Enable OSC feedback option in the OSC tab of the Preferences dialog is checked, Hydrogen will send its current state to all registered clients causing it to become slower and slower with every oscsend command sent. Soon you will experience visual lags. When unchecking this option, however, using oscsend is fine.

Warning

oscsend should only be used for sparse interactive testing and control via a command-line. Using it in scripts is not recommended since every time it sends a command it will registers a new client at the OSC server. If the Enable OSC feedback option in the OSC tab of the Preferences dialog is checked, Hydrogen will send its current state to all registered clients causing it to become slower and slower with every oscsend command sent. Soon you will experience visual lags. When unchecking this option, however, using oscsend is fine.

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16.2. MIDI-learnable Widgets	Home	17.2. Commands