[LAU] Jack 1 vs. 2

Len Ovens len at ovenwerks.net
Mon Feb 8 18:31:13 CET 2021


On Mon, 8 Feb 2021, Max wrote:

> Interesting thread.
> Out of curiosity: How does pipewire relate here? Since it claims to be a 
> replacement for jack and pulseaudio but jack1 and jack2 coexist, does it 
> replace jack1 or 2?

it shows promise but is not there yet. Jack2 (I do not know if jack1 is 
also able to ask pulse to release a device) at least will be able to ask 
for a device from PW and so run along side. PW can bridge, as a jack 
client, to a running jack. It can run as jack... but so far no ability to 
load the ffado back end. The alsa fireworks module seems broken since 
after 5.4 (5.4 works but 5.8-5.11 do not) and so pw as a jack replacement 
is not an option for me. Unfortunately USB audio is not a replacement for 
a FW device running the FFADO modules in stability, perhaps the way JACK 
deals with ALSA needs a revisit or maybe alsa in general needs a look with 
an eye towards lower latency use.

So when pw is finished (if it gets that far), it should effectively be a 
drop in replacement for jack2 with a pulse frontend. With the added 
ability to have it's parameters changed on the fly in a more stable manner 
than JACK2 does now. It should be noted however, that many JACK clients do 
not deal with JACK parameter changes very well. There are very few that 
can just keep going (guitarix handles this about the best I think). The 
better ones might just drop JACK ports and complain, some exit gracefully 
and some just do wierd things until restarted. I think the best thing to 
do is to choose a studio sample rate and frame size and stick with it. At 
last make any changes before starting jack applications and utilities.


--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net


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