[LAU] JACK2 hardware buffer size for browser-based video conferencing

[Chris Caudle]

On Sun, January 3, 2021 1:27 pm, Andrew A. Grathwohl wrote:
> I have a question about my microphone audio quality when
> participating in a browser-based video conference, i.e., Google Meet and
> Jitsi on chromium browser.

How does the Google Meet or Jitsi software interact with jackd?  Does
chromium support jackd natively now, or are you using pulseaudio jack
module?

> Starting last week, I have received numerous reports from coworkers
> that my audio is considerably higher quality than normal.
...
> In pursuit of understanding why this is occurring, I looked at my
> JACK2 settings to see if I'd changed anything lately. Sure enough, I
> noticed that I have been working at a larger JACK2 hardware buffer size
> than normal.

My guess (only a guess, but I would be open to discussion of ways to test
the hypothesis) is that changing the buffer size either reduced dropouts
in the jackd to browser interface (which I assume is probably pulseaudio
jack module, which is known to have some problems at low jack buffer
sizes), or the larger buffer size rippled through to the browser interface
and allowed the meeting software to process fewer buffers, reducing
dropouts in the meeting software somewhere, either browser implementation,
or server (if a central server was used rather than peer-to-peer), or at
the other end of the connection.

-- 
Chris Caudle