Sorry for a problem that is probably just down to my ignorance. I am running mdk 9.2 with an audigy sound card using the alsa driver emu10k1. jackd -d alsa -d hw starts without error message. it says : jackd 0.93.6 Copyright 2001-2003 Paul Davis and others. jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details loading driver .. apparent rate = 44100 creating alsa driver ... hw|hw|1024|2|44100|0|0|nomon|swmeter|rt|32bit configuring for 44100Hz, period = 1024 frames, buffer = 2 periods Couldn't open hw for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead Couldn't open hw for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead Couldn't open hw for 32bit samples trying 24bit instead Couldn't open hw for 24bit samples trying 16bit instead starting zyn doesn't yield any error message. When using the virtual keyboard, the meters at the bottom suggest some sound is being generated but I can't hear it. I've seen references to jack-connect but I don't know what it is. My sound set-up works fine otherwise (xmms artsd (disabled for the moment) all use alsa output device) A rtfm pointer would be just fine.