[LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

[Len Ovens]

On Mon, February 18, 2013 8:44 am, jonetsu at teksavvy.com wrote:

> There are a few choices in enabling Envy24, and all of them have to do
> with either 'stereo' or 'surround'.  So far I haven't tried Ardour on

Ya, PA tries to map anything more than 2 channels to surround.

> this new Linux Mint machine (used Fedora/CCRMA for years, but F18 is not
> nice at all so I switched - one nice thing with Mint is that for time to
> time they issue a long-lasting release eg. Mint 13 is supported until
> 2017 - current is Mint 14, supported for a year, which is what I
> currently use, until another long-lasting release is issued), so, so far
> I haven't tried Ardour/jack on this new machine and I hope those
> 'stereo' and 'surround' things do not interfere with multi-track
> recording.

There is no reason it should. I have a delta66 which looks to the computer
the same as the 1010. PA does not change the settings of the ice1712, it
just feeds audio to it. Once jack is running, it doesn't do anything to
the ice1712 at all, it just feeds the audio to jack (all 10 channels :P ).
Jack decides if any of those channels should be routed anywhere from
there. The module-jackdbus-detect that is loaded when PA is started, has
an option that allows it not just create the ports but not auto connect
them. That might be useful. Jack and ardour are separate and connected as
they (or the users) wishes.
>
> I'm all for having a lean system, even with quad core CPU there's no
> excuse in running stuff that is not needed.
> On my previous Fedora 15 system I had to shut down jack for firefox to
> have sound output. Do I need PA ?

The short answer is no. The long answer is that pa may be a better option
than other ways of doing the same thing. There are a number of people on
this list who hate pulse and don't install it and find other ways of doing
what it can do. There are others who use it.

>  Can it be useful say, to have
> jack/Ardour running and at the same time have media from firefox being
> played or even recorded in Ardour ?

Only you can answer that. Lets ask a different question :)  lets say you
are using jack to run idjc as a radio station and you wish to interview
someone via skype. skype don't know jack (or perhaps much else) but it
does deal well with pulse, the pa-jack bridge allows this to happen. It is
worthwhile?

Lets say your soundcard is firewire... jack can connect to the FW IF, but
there is no FW ALSA drivers so PA can't, is it better to use the PA-jack
bridge to feed your desktop sound to your amp, or mix the internal sounds
output outside the computer? (or run an audio line from the internal card
to the firewire card)

There are lots of places where having both PA and jack do not make any
sense... like when using ardour for recording.

>  Can PA play with jack ?  Is that a
> usefulness of having PA around ?

PA can play with jack, there are some uses for that. There are also a lot
of people who will never have to do those uses too.

The question is if you need PA and if you need to be able to feed pa to or
from jack for your workflow.


-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net