[linux-audio-user] qjackctl patchbay - individual ports of a client?

[Rui Nuno Capela]

On Mon, December 18, 2006 00:37, Larry Troxler wrote:
> It seems that the qjackctl patchbay only works with clients as a whole -
> you cannot selectively connect individual ports within a client. I'd just
> like to verify that this is really true.
>

No it isn't.


> If the connections in the "Connections" dialog were saved as a
> configuration file, that would help, but I think that this is not the
> case.
>
> The reason for this question is that it seems that pd cannot generate
> multiple jack clients, and I want to route more than one qsynth engine
> into it.
>
> In the meantime, I am setting up scripts that use jack_connect and
> aconnect, but this is a bit tedious. I'm using DeMuDi 1.2 (I don't know
> why I waited so long to try it!)
>
>
> So, if anyone has suggestions or clarifications, I'd be very grateful.
>

QjackCtl patchbay can do what you want, I'm almost sure ;)

Take note of this, when regarding your approach to the Patchbay model:

1) You group all _or_ just a sub-set of ports into a so called patchbay
socket. A socket is an ordered group of all or some client ports. You can
have as many sockets as you want pointing to the _same_ client, but it is
worthwhile to note that having duplicated sockets for the same client with
the very same set of ports is just redundant.

2) You declare to connect sockets, not clients. When two sockets are said
connected, that is regarded as a declarative rule to automatiically
connect those respective client-ports, one-by-one in that precise order.
Again, the rule states for connecting ports, not just clients.

3) You're probably relying on the bare snapshot that is created while you
set a new Patchbay definition. This snapshot is a rough and skewed image
of your current client-port connections, that you _must_ regard just as a
convenient starting point. Do not take it for granted OOTB. On most if not
all situations you'll need to duplicate some sockets, trim each socket
port list, reorder, and edit the connections between the intentional port
groups (aka sockets).

4) You can edit and add sockets that refer to client/ports that aren't
actually running, although it surely helps to get the client/port names
right. Client names can be entered as regular expressions while you edit a
socket definition. This is most convenient for matching those clients that
have some pseudo-random number in their name suffixes (e.g xmms-jack pid).

5) The Patchbay rules are then only effective after you save and activate it.

Cheers.
-- 
rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc at rncbc.org