Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

UnsolvedCypher · 2012-09-08 01:25:29

I'm sorry if this has been covered before, I have searched around the internet and haven't been able to find anything addressing my issue.

I installed Ardour, but it failed to start JACK. After further inspection, I realized that it would only run if I kill pulseaudio. This causes problems because my system sound works through pulseaudio (I think) and I was not able to hear anything. Is there a way to switch my entire system over to JACK? Does each application depend on either one or the other and is it necessary to have both? Also, do pulseaudio and JACK have exactly the same purpose, or are they different?
Thanks, ~Unsolved Cypher

adamrehard · 2012-09-08 02:32:50

UnsolvedCypher wrote:

I'm sorry if this has been covered before, I have searched around the internet and haven't been able to find anything addressing my issue.
I installed Ardour, but it failed to start JACK. After further inspection, I realized that it would only run if I kill pulseaudio. This causes problems because my system sound works through pulseaudio (I think) and I was not able to hear anything. Is there a way to switch my entire system over to JACK? Does each application depend on either one or the other and is it necessary to have both? Also, do pulseaudio and JACK have exactly the same purpose, or are they different?
Thanks, ~Unsolved Cypher

Just off the top of my head, I'd say you soundcard can't handle the output from both sound systems at the same time. You can't switch your entire system to use JACK, because that's not what it's designed for. JACK is designed to be used in pro recording systems, like Ardour, because of the extremely low latency it provides, among other things. This may help with your problem. http://trac.jackaudio.org/wiki/WalkThro … ulseOnJack

Hope it helps, Adam

ConnorBehan · 2012-09-08 05:30:29

Well Pulse and Jack are both sound servers so there can easily be some breakage if you don't spend some time to make them talk to eachother properly. I think it is conceivable that you could switch your entire system to jack. Programs like mplayer, vlc and mpd support jack output so if you open qjackctl you can keep a close eye on it and make sure that programs you run are indeed showing up as Jack clients with output routed to speakers.

Pulse will of course support more apps because it provides a virtual ALSA device. Most ALSA apps that don't have explicit Pulse support will by fooled by it and fall under the control of Pulseaudio. You can also make Pulse send sound to Jack. To do this, put

load-module module-jack-sink
load-module module-jack-source

in /etc/pulse/default.pa. With this, starting the pulse daemon will automatically start the jack daemon.

UnsolvedCypher · 2012-09-08 11:47:57

In the link that adamrehard provided, it says to install pulseaudio-module-jack . Does anyone know where I might find this?
Thanks!

progandy · 2012-09-08 12:17:30

UnsolvedCypher wrote:

In the link that adamrehard provided, it says to install pulseaudio-module-jack . Does anyone know where I might find this?
Thanks!

The arch pulseaudio package already contains the jack modules:

% y -Ql pulseaudio | grep jack
pulseaudio /usr/lib/pulse-2.1/modules/module-jack-sink.so
pulseaudio /usr/lib/pulse-2.1/modules/module-jack-source.so
pulseaudio /usr/lib/pulse-2.1/modules/module-jackdbus-detect.so

UnsolvedCypher · 2012-09-09 02:03:08

ConnorBehan wrote:

Well Pulse and Jack are both sound servers so there can easily be some breakage if you don't spend some time to make them talk to eachother properly. I think it is conceivable that you could switch your entire system to jack. Programs like mplayer, vlc and mpd support jack output so if you open qjackctl you can keep a close eye on it and make sure that programs you run are indeed showing up as Jack clients with output routed to speakers.
Pulse will of course support more apps because it provides a virtual ALSA device. Most ALSA apps that don't have explicit Pulse support will by fooled by it and fall under the control of Pulseaudio. You can also make Pulse send sound to Jack. To do this, put
load-module module-jack-sink
load-module module-jack-source
in /etc/pulse/default.pa. With this, starting the pulse daemon will automatically start the jack daemon.

When I type load-module in terminal, it says command not found, so I think this might cause problems. I'm not sure if this makes a difference or not, but I am using systemd. Is there something I need to install for this command to work?
Thanks!

ConnorBehan · 2012-09-09 02:46:13

You are supposed to put those lines in /etc/pulse/default.pa which is read by pulseaudio. They are NOT valid system commands.

UnsolvedCypher · 2012-09-09 02:50:44

ConnorBehan wrote:

You are supposed to put those lines in /etc/pulse/default.pa which is read by pulseaudio. They are NOT valid system commands.

Got it, thanks. My sound seems to have stopped working completely, though, and I'm not sure whether I need to start pulseaudio or do something else. I tried to start pulseaudio, but it said

jackd 0.121.3
Copyright 2001-2009 Paul Davis, Stephane Letz, Jack O'Quinn, Torben Hohn and others.
jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details

could not open driver .so '/usr/lib/jack/jack_firewire.so': libffado.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

could not open driver .so '/usr/lib/jack/jack_net.so': libcelt0.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

JACK compiled with System V SHM support.
cannot use real-time scheduling (FIFO at priority 10) [for thread -1258461440, from thread -1258461440] (1: Operation not permitted)
cannot create engine
E: [pulseaudio] module-jack-sink.c: jack_client_open() failed.
E: [pulseaudio] module.c: Failed to load module "module-jack-sink" (argument: "channels=2"): initialization failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Module load failed.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to initialize daemon.

ConnorBehan · 2012-09-09 03:38:55

Those are supposed to be optional dependencies... there might be a way to tell jack not to try to load them. But they are easy to satisfy. Install libffado and celt.

UnsolvedCypher · 2012-09-09 21:21:58

ConnorBehan wrote:

Those are supposed to be optional dependencies... there might be a way to tell jack not to try to load them. But they are easy to satisfy. Install libffado and celt.

Ok, I did that. But the sound control still doesn't show up the way it usually does in gnome-shell (the little speaker icon). When I go to sound under system settings, it doesn't show any output or input devices. Could you give me a push in the right direction please?
Thanks! ~UnsolvedCypher

ConnorBehan · 2012-09-10 04:53:27

I think a Gnome user would be better equipped to answer that. Does sound work in general though? You can try programs like qjackctl and pavucontrol to see if things with the sound servers are setup correctly.

vaquerito · 2012-09-19 07:18:25

UnsolvedCypher wrote:

I'm sorry if this has been covered before, I have searched around the internet and haven't been able to find anything addressing my issue.
I installed Ardour, but it failed to start JACK. After further inspection, I realized that it would only run if I kill pulseaudio. This causes problems because my system sound works through pulseaudio (I think) and I was not able to hear anything. Is there a way to switch my entire system over to JACK? Does each application depend on either one or the other and is it necessary to have both? Also, do pulseaudio and JACK have exactly the same purpose, or are they different?
Thanks, ~Unsolved Cypher

Hi, you have to be clear on what you're trying to accomplish.

If you just have to use ardour or other jack app from time to time, you don't need to migrate the entire system over jack, nor it is a good idea to make ardour go trough pulse sink, since it can talk directly to jack. It will suffice to suspend pulseaudio prior to running jack and have it resumed after.

$ pacmd suspend true
run ardour
$ pacmd suspend false

or put "pasuspender -- jackd" in qjackctl, under "server path"

If you intend to use jack more extensively and/or need to run it most of the times (I, for instance, have a firewire card and need to have it always on), then things turn upside down as you'll have to run jack as the main server and have pulseaudio routed trough it.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pu … he_new_way
http://jackaudio.org/pulseaudio_and_jack

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-08 01:25:29

Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#2 2012-09-08 02:32:50

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#3 2012-09-08 05:30:29

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#4 2012-09-08 11:47:57

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#5 2012-09-08 12:17:30

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#6 2012-09-09 02:03:08

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#7 2012-09-09 02:46:13

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#8 2012-09-09 02:50:44

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#9 2012-09-09 03:38:55

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#10 2012-09-09 21:21:58

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#11 2012-09-10 04:53:27

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

#12 2012-09-19 07:18:25

Re: Ardour, pulseaudio, and JACK

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