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Hello,
I face an issue with my computer audio which leads me to a dilemma: how to approach the sound installation on my setup? Jack2 or PulseAudio, or a mix of those?
I have a setup, where I would like to do office related work on my PC, I watch YouTube videos, and do Teams calls, so I don't really care about the quality of the audio. I have an internal sound card but use a USB attached headset most of the time. I use MATE DE.
The issue I faced was the following: During a Teams meeting my sound was cracking up (I could randomly not hear the other party for a few milliseconds) which is very-very annoying. By the way YouTube videos play nicely on the same browser.
I did a research on the wiki and saw that PulseAudio (only) would solve my problem because it kind of automatically handles the devices. But a bunch of applications I use (Firefox, Chrome for example) have jack2 as a dependency, so I already have jack2 installed. I started reading the Arch wiki as usual, but...
I ended up confused how to even start this process. I usually understand the Arch wiki nicely and I could solve my problems without posting to the forum but now I really have no clue about the topics the wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/JACK_A … ection_Kit) talks about. Latency, scheduling, audio graph, etc.
I feel that for me this rabbit hole would go very deep and I don't want to spend way too much time on it, so I am looking for an experienced user's birds eye view how to handle this situation.
Alternatively solving my sound cracking issue would be the best, but I don't really think I can get away with a quick one liner fix.
Thank you in advance!
Last edited by tna (2022-09-12 12:34:01)
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But a bunch of applications I use (Firefox, Chrome for example) have jack2 as a dependency
They don't:
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/firefox/
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/chromium/
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/google-chrome
There is no jack2 anywhere on dependency list of those packages (there is one in firefox' makedeps, but it's irrelevant for normal package installation).
I really have no clue about the topics the wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/JACK_A … ection_Kit) talks about. Latency, scheduling, audio graph, etc.
That's because JACK is targeted at professional audio. The use cases you listed shouldn't need pro audio, so you should stick with PulseAudio.
Or alternatively consider PipeWire, which is intended to be a replacement for both PulseAudio and JACK.
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By the sound of it, you only need pulseaudio. Pipewire should also be sufficient as well but I don't have experience with it.
You can also install jack2 if you wish and just enable it when an app needs it. stanczew is right however. The browsers don't need jack for sound.
Last edited by d_fajardo (2022-09-12 11:32:07)
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I uninstalled jack2 and installed pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa and my problem went away, even the "native" Teams app started working instead of crashing all the time, and also, the sound preferences in MATE DE seems to work. (These were issues, I thought I'll handle later).
Now I am facing another issue which is probably not related but this led me to the situation in the first place.
When I uninstalled jack2 it uninstalled chromium and firefox with it too. When I want to reinstall these, I am facing the below output
$ sudo pacman -S firefox
[sudo] password for xxx:
resolving dependencies...
:: There are 2 providers available for jack:
:: Repository extra
1) jack2 2) pipewire-jack
Enter a number (default=1):
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (32) ffmpeg-2:5.1.1-3 gsm-1.0.22-1 hidapi-0.12.0-1 jack2-1.9.21-1 l-smash-2.14.5-2 lame-3.100-4 libass-0.16.0-1 libavc1394-0.5.4-4
libbs2b-3.1.0-8 libiec61883-1.2.0-6 libmfx-22.4.4-1 libmodplug-0.8.9.0-3 libraw1394-2.1.2-3 libsamplerate-0.2.2-1 libssh-0.10.4-1
libtheora-1.1.1-5 libva-2.15.0-6 libvdpau-1.5-1 libvpx-1.12.0-1 mailcap-2.1.53-1 ocl-icd-2.3.1-1 opencore-amr-0.1.6-1 sdl2-2.24.0-2
srt-1.5.0-1 sysfsutils-2.1.1-1 v4l-utils-1.22.1-1 vid.stab-1.1-3 vmaf-2.3.1-1 x264-3:0.164.r3095.baee400-4 xvidcore-1.3.7-2 zimg-3.0.4-1
firefox-104.0.2-1
Total Installed Size: 310.29 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] yFrom the comment of @d_fajardo I assume that in my current setup jack2 is although installed not configured, therefore pulseaudio is taking over.
If someone can explain why firefox installs jack2 even though it is not listed as a dependency I would be happy, but my original issue is resolved.
Thank you very much for the solution and the swift repsponses!
Last edited by tna (2022-09-13 06:32:14)
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Damn, I missed it because I have pipewire-jack instead of jack2.
'jack' is a dependency of ffmpeg, and it's provided by both of the above packages; ffmpeg in turn is a dependency of Firefox, and that's why it's pulled during installation.
As you noted, just having jack2 installed doesn't mean you have to use it as a sound server; PulseAudio should work regardless in such case.
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Hah, tricky. Thanks again, for the clarification.
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