On Fri, March 22, 2019 5:30 pm, liebrecht(a)grossmann-venter.com wrote: If you search through the linux audio users mail list archives you will find plenty of posts with help for new users of jack. But as you say: That is a valid complaint. The problem is somewhat difficult to solve, partly because the problem being solved is complicated, partly because on most linux distributions the default audio configuration is set for playing back audio, not producing audio. Do you know why those users are using jack? Ardour has supported using ALSA directly for quite a while, I believe Qtractor and LMMS do as well. Do those users need the ability to route between applications which jack provides? 10's of usergroups? Did you start with linux-audio-users? That is the primary location for audio on linux information. I am actually a little surprised to find you have been using linux for so long, there was a lot of basic information missing in your original email which I would expect an experienced user to provide out of habit. For example, your first email did not specify - which operating system you were using (jackd runs on 3). - later you indicated linux; which distribution? Which version? - which version of jackd and pulseaudio? You provided partial information from qjackctl: qjackctl reports the following. Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory ... But did not provide the full output of the "Messages" window of qjackctl. For example, when qjackctl attempts to start jackd you should see the full command line which is used: 19:22:09.341 JACK is starting... 19:22:09.341 /usr/bin/jackd -P70 -t2000 -dalsa -dhw:Lambda -r48000 -p1024 -n3 -zt -I376 -O376 The output of jackd follows from there. "Cannot connect to server" type messages are common as jackd initially starts. You can also copy that command line and start jackd from a terminal so that you can see the startup messages being printed in real time. That is probably part of the problem. The way that pulseaudio ensures it works is starting early and locking exclusive access of the primary ALSA device. Recent versions give up control gracefully, for many years now on Fedora I have had no problems at all starting jackd with either qjackctl or from the command line, the version of pulseaudio shipped by fedora gives up control of the audio device when jackd requests, and when I stop jackd then pulseaudio takes control again. Knowing which distribution you use may make it easier for someone to help. Ubuntu typically breaks audio production software frequently, but there are optional repositories to help with that. I am not sure I understand this complaint. Do you have an example of something in the man page or help output you find inconsistent? The different backends available and the way that there are arguments to the main jack server and separate arguments for the backend driver can be confusing. Is that what you are referring to? The pulseaudio server will open an ALSA device for exclusive access, but jackd also needs to open the ALSA device for exclusive access. Obviously only one server at a time can have exclusive access to a particular driver. Most modern versions of pulseaudio that I am familiar with using on Fedora Linux do not have that problem, but as you gave no indication of which linux distribution, which pulseaudio version, or which jackd version you are using it is difficult to say more than "works for me." jack-audio-connection-kit-1.9.12-6.fc29.x86_64 pulseaudio-12.2-1.fc29.x86_64 qjackctl-0.5.5-2.fc29.x86_64 I do not understand exactly what you are trying to convey. I think of jackd more like a patch bay for routing audio within the OS. Is that just a different way of saying the same thing you wrote there? Of course not, it has been a principle of general purpose operating systems for well over five decades that user space programs do not directly access hardware, the operating system kernel mediates access to the hardware. On the contrary it simplifies things. It would be wasteful and error prone if the jack project had to duplicate the work done in the linux kernel audio drivers. It also gives a clear boundary to check basic audio functionality using ALSA utilities (such as aplay and arecord) separately from the routing and patch bay functionality of jackd. ALSA has an API, jackd also has an API, but I don't get the impression that is what you mean. The method that jackd uses to communicate with ALSA devices is the same as every audio software which supports ALSA, including pulseaudio, audacity, Ardour, etc. I am not really sure what you mean there, perhaps copying the actual output from jackd when it has an error will allow someone to help you by pointing out the messages which indicate why jackd could not start. jack I would That is basically what jackd is. Having multiple audio interfaces complicates the situation, having multiple sound servers (e.g. jack and pulseaudio) complicates the situation. If you have a machine with only one audio interface and no other audio servers running just start jackd and it will work. Once your machine setup gets more complicated than that then any sound server will require you to make some configuration choices. One thing which may in the future prove useful to you is the Red Hat pipewire project. The aim of that project is to make a single server which combines the features of pulseaudio and jackd, and also provides similar features for video, running as the default media server for Fedora. That final working solution is still some time in the future, but sounds like it should be what you are looking for in terms of default working setup with only minimal configuration required. I am reminded of a quip about Unix operating systems: "Unix is user friendly, it is just very picky about who it makes friends with." Start jackd from the command line, copy and paste the output messages to an email so that someone can have hope of helping you. So far you have a lot of complaints but not much information. Regarding the question you asked of Holger: No, you misunderstood what the instructions were doing. They were essentially making sure pulseaudio did not start automatically, setting up jackd as the main audio server, launching pulse with the jack interface module as the audio interface instead of ALSA, and also secondarily setting up an ALSA pseudo-device which exposed a jack port as an ALSA device for software which attempts to use ALSA directly. I find that almost all current software versions support pulse, so the ALSA setup is not needed. Note that in my opinion if you need those instructions, your chosen linux distribution has not done a good job configuring the audio software provided in the distribution repositories. I don't want to be too repetitive, but in Fedora none of that is necessary, just start jackd and it works. You will probably need to load the jack modules in pulseaudio, but that may work by default now. I am not sure, I have had a modified pulse configuration file in my user directory for so long I am not positive of some of the current default behavior. -- Chris Caudle