JACK2 1.9.13 Released As First Update In Nearly 2 Years For The Low-Latency Audio Server

[phoronix]

Phoronix: JACK2 1.9.13 Released As First Update In Nearly 2 Years For The Low-Latency Audio Server

While Red Hat is pursuing Pipewire with plans to fill the use-cases provided by the JACK(2) low-latency audio server, JACK2 isn't letting up and Sunday marked version 1.9.13 for the project and their first release since December 2017...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=JACK2-1.9.13

[tildearrow]

Awesome!

JACK2 1.9.13 also corrects its GPL license usage to LGPL for the code files needed to build the JACK library (libjack)

Good for pro audio apps.

[timofonic]

I have a dream...

PulseAudio and JACK1/JACK2 not needed anymore.

It will be replaced by an improved ALSA plus Pipewire.

Will Pipewire become merged into systemd? systemd-audio?

[Ardje]

It's alsa or jack for me. Actually I use a sound card for pulseaudio that I feed back into the realtime part of my system using real analog cables... It works better than trying to get pulseaudio to play nice with jack without it eating most of my CPU.

[Ardje]

I have a dream...

PulseAudio and JACK1/JACK2 not needed anymore.
It will be replaced by an improved ALSA plus Pipewire.
Will Pipewire become merged into systemd? systemd-audio?

I think the only reason for pipewire to exist is to handle the mess pulseaudio has made from the linux audio environment when it comes to professional realtime audio. I think 99.9% of the instructions on realtime audio is on how to disable pulseaudio for your card.
For instance:

ard@lenny:~$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/50-ddjsx3.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="2b73", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0023", ENV{PULSE_IGNORE}="1"

Will almost automagically disable autoconsumption of the devices by pulseaudio. It doesn't work 100%, so you need to start certain apps in a specific order.

[[TV]]

Wouldn't mind having JACK2 working with OSS4, but I guess I'll just have to stick with JACK1 for now. Just not willing to break the excellent combination of the old M-Audio PCI cards and OSS4 yet.

[tildearrow]

I think the only reason for pipewire to exist is to handle the mess pulseaudio has made from the linux audio environment when it comes to professional realtime audio. I think 99.9% of the instructions on realtime audio is on how to disbale pulseaudio for your card.
For instance:

ard@lenny:~$ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/50-ddjsx3.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="2b73", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0023", ENV{PULSE_IGNORE}="1"

Will almost automagically disable autoconsumption of the devices by pulseaudio. It doesn't work 100%, so you need to start certain apps in a specific order.

SX3? Dang it, I'm sorry, I can't help you with the mapping!

[Ardje]

SX3? Dang it, I'm sorry, I can't help you with the mapping!

Yeah, ordered an SX3 to see if it works, figuring I would have 2 weeks to send it back and order an SX2 (full USB audio class complient).
Turns out it wasn't USB Audio Class complient. So in 5.4 is the support for the SX3, and in all other LTS releases is a necessary minor usb-audio bugfix. With the right hints from others I had time to spare. Took me 6 months to get my lazy ass of the couch to send in the patches.

Not 100% support, as I still have to figure out the microphone mixer settings, or better: how they have to be done in alsa. But full pcm support. Midi was already good.
Yeah, it was definitely worth the money, especially coming from a hercules universal DJ.

[tildearrow]

Yeah, ordered an SX3 to see if it works, figuring I would have 2 weeks to send it back and order an SX2 (full USB audio class complient).
Turns out it wasn't USB Audio Class complient. So in 5.4 is the support for the SX3, and in all other LTS releases is a necessary minor usb-audio bugfix. With the right hints from others I had time to spare. Took me 6 months to get my lazy ass of the couch to send in the patches.

Not 100% support, as I still have to figure out the microphone mixer settings, or better: how they have to be done in alsa. But full pcm support. Midi was already good.
Yeah, it was definitely worth the money, especially coming from a hercules universal DJ.

I am actually surprised the SX3 isn't class-compliant...

[Ardje]

I am actually surprised the SX3 isn't class-compliant...

I think there is a very good reason for that. Because it actually is as far as I can tell, except for missing the elaborate descriptors, and it's classes are flagged as vendor instead of UAC.
Windows 10 has much better support for devices than any older windows version. It will pick up on class drivers (afaik) without needing it to fallback to a .inf file from the vendor signed by microsoft that tells all it needs is the windows class driver.
Windows audio is crap, it's like trying to use pulseaudio for professional low latency audio.
So there is a new alsa (or jack?) style (proprietary) API (not from microsoft) that has multichannel low latency audio support, that has been developed by the audio gear companies. It requires you to have drivers that support that API. And what better way is there to prevent people from accidentally getting the wrong drivers linked to their hardware than just flag it vendor specific :-). My gaze upon that driver before resorting to plain USB sniffing is that it seems like a generic USB audio PCM driver. It really is very small.
So yeah, I think this move to vendor specific from more vendors is due to Windows 10 having a better USB class driver support, and that will raise hell on support issues.
The midi is UAC compliant though, and goes through the normal audio class drivers.

You might also think about planned obsolescence, although I don't really believe it. The SX and SX2 are UAC compliant and are still very expensive to buy, even second hand. Because they are great. There was a time they were more expensive second hand than the SX3 new (due to bugs in the SX3). Now the SX3 will only work as long as the drivers work. On mac it will probably be faster obsolete than on windows.