[LAU] [PlanetCCRMA] Mixer Wowes

[Esben Stien]

alex stone <compose59 at gmail.com> writes:

> Or you can simply configure Alsa to use Jack with an .asoundrc. 

This has never worked nicely. I've been doing that for many years,
before using the ALSA pulseaudio plugin.

> I'd dare venture that if distros had embraced Jack as quickly and
> enthusiastically as that had Pulse (with almost no warning to users)
> we wouldn't know what pulse was.

Pulse solves completely different problems than JACK. A unified
solution would be nice, but that would include the features of both
JACK and pulseaudio.

>> It would be a major design fault to not abstract this from the
>> desktop environment.
> Why? 

The same way you don't want apps to talk to hardware directly, like
with JACK.

> we could have done all this with jack

No, not in its current state. They have completely different feature
sets. JACK does not offer good enough features for normal use. I agree
totally that JACK is the most awesome thing to ever hit the audio
world, no doubt, but it just doesn't address normal use cases, at this
stage.


>> just set it up as a JACK client and be done with it.
> And add another layer of complexity for the user, who, when something
> goes wrong, has even more to figure out

You're arguing for removing pulseaudio completely. It obviously
addresses concerns and needs that is not solved by any other
software. Suggesting just putting JACK in instead is not a solution,
cause it does not address issues involving normal use cases. I can't
underline that any more than I already have. 

>>> It doesn't see the Mic/Line inputs at all, they only show up after
>>> I disable Pulseaudio and establish ALSA as my primary sound
>>> manager.
>> Still the same here..
> Not a good sign then.

I meant use pulseaudio as a JACK client, not that I saw the same
problem. There is work ongoing to solve the issue of starting JACK
after pulseaudio has already grabbed the device. Yes, this is a
current problem, but it doesn't really say anything about either JACK
or pulseaudio, other than it's a feature we need.

>>> My needs are professional, ergo I do not need or want Pulseaudio.
>> I just can't see this as an issue, cause it's not;). Pulse runs as a
>> JACK client. 
> You may not recognise it as an issue 

What I meant was that if he ran pulseaudio as a JACK plugin, he
wouldn't have to bother with pulseaudio being there.

Of course, if you want to save 1% CPU by not having it running, it
should be made possible by the distro; I'm not arguing against that,
of course.

> For poor little Sally Singalong trying to record her first tune,
> it's a world of mystery, and beyond her capacity to fix.

I understand this. The issue is basically that the system to notify
pulseaudio to yield when JACK is started is not there or working. This
is sad, but I just don't want to trash pulseaudio because it currently
lacks this feature. 

-- 
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