QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

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BrnVrn
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QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by BrnVrn »

Hi,
I am using QJackCtl with Ardour, MuseScore and Guitarix on Fedora.
It works great, but I would love to be able to close everything and restart the next day without having to reopen and rewire everything.

In QJackCtl, the session worked almost completely, restarting MuseScore and Guitarix, but not Ardour.
I did not find any documentation about QJackCtl Sessions. I tried to play with XML file, but could not get any result, could not find how to write the commands to change how the applications are launched. No error message why Ardour did not restart.

I tried the Patchbay, it does not feature the application restart, nor does it seems to have a clear logic (I found one documentation page, almost 10 years old).

Did someone manage to get the Session feature working? is there documentation, Wiki, videos about it ??

Thanks
Bruno
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by tavasti »

non-session-manager might be worth trying.

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tramp
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by tramp »

BrnVrn wrote:In QJackCtl, the session worked almost completely, restarting MuseScore and Guitarix, but not Ardour.
Muse and guitarix has direct support for jack-session. Ardour has it once (ardour3, if I remember right) but seems to drop it in the mean time.
However, you could include ardour as "Infra-client".
To do so, load your session, start ardour and make your connections. Then save your session (select overwrite) and refresh the view.
Ardour pops up now under the "Infra-client" row.
Now you need to edit the "Infra-command", select "edit" and write in "ardour5 /path/to/your/ardour_project" (or what ever command line you need to start ardour).
Save again.
That's it. You could reload your session now by select it from the "Load" list.
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BrnVrn
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by BrnVrn »

Thanks, I can have almost everything restored.
Only thing is that I get extra connections, that I have to remove. For example, MuseScore reconnect to default playback "automatically", even if not specified in the session XML file.
I don't see an "exclusive" option https://github.com/rncbc/qjackctl/blob/ ... onFile.txt like there is in the Patchbay.

Non Session Manager looked good, but seems to have stopped in 2013 http://non.tuxfamily.org/wiki/News ??
Ladish seems to have stopped in 2013 too ... I even found some command lines session management tools.
https://github.com/murrayfoster/autocable looks handy ! (just saw in a related post viewtopic.php?f=48&t=17783)

I really don't see where this is going, I guess I will stick to QJackCtl until another project really stands-up.
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by tramp »

BrnVrn wrote:Only thing is that I get extra connections, that I have to remove. For example, MuseScore reconnect to default playback "automatically", even if not specified in the session XML file.
to avoid that you could restrict self connections by adding -a a to the server prefix in the qjackctl setup widget under the advanced tap.
So it becomes

Code: Select all

jackd -a a
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GMaq
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by GMaq »

Hi,

What about this: http://aj-snapshot.sourceforge.net/

Very simple, just saves and restores your JACK connections from a text file..

If you're on Debian or Ubuntu I have a simple UI to save and retrieve your aj-snapshots that comes with AV Linux, I could share it if you're interested in trying aj-snapshot..
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by tramp »

GMaq wrote:What about this: http://aj-snapshot.sourceforge.net/

Very simple, just saves and restores your JACK connections from a text file..
regardless which session management system you use, you'll need to restrict self-connections.
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BrnVrn
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by BrnVrn »

And it works! Thanks a lot. :D

For the record, I had to "sudo dnf remove jack-audio-connection-kit-dbus" because for whatever reason, adding "-aa" to the prefix was not taken into account when restarting Jack from QJackCtl. (It also removed Ladish, wich is sad since Ladish GUI was nice.)

Also, there are a few preferences in Ardour that can simplify and de-clutter the connections:
- "Signal Flow": set to manually
- "Sync / LTC" set to none.

Note that at one point, I was afraid that the infra commands were not specific to the session, because they are stored in ".config/rncbc.org/QjackCtl.conf". But I was able to delete them and as I restarted, Jack used the "commands" from my session xml file (loading the right score and Ardour session). Excellent.

I am still able to launch Carla, looks nice too, but I will do some music before digging into it ...
BrnVrn
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by BrnVrn »

Last point would be:
GordonS
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by GordonS »

I use a combination of tools for this kind of thing, all run from a script.

Code: Select all

jack_lsp
jack_connect
jack_disconnect
are the bits I use for jack connection management.

The script is in python, starts/stops all of the tools I want for a session, complete with options like each application's session, connects everything via jack, and places the application windows on specified workspaces using:

Code: Select all

wmctrl
Combined with auto-login and a script auto-run, often I just boot the PC and shortly I'm ready to go.

An SSD drive helps it all to be quick.
BrnVrn
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by BrnVrn »

I admit there is one flaw with using -aa to restrict self connection : If you want to add a track or to change some routing in Ardour, you cannot anymore!
The restriction does not happen only when launching the apps.

This and the Jack1 / Jack2 developed in parallel, but not with same options (Jack1 does not support -aa). I guess the script solution might be the most simple after all.
brau
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Re: QJackCtl sessions or Patchbay

Post by brau »

There is an option to save the configuration in patchbay . When you initiate the file your connections will be there.
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