JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

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j_e_f_f_g
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JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

bebob99 wrote: That "Jack" thing and his family turns out to be a monster that does refuse to get domesticated by me.
JACK is the worst thing that ever happened to Linux audio. It was entirely the wrong approach toward "music software interoperability". I've deduced that its author did very little research into the tools that professional musicians were using at the time, and definitely was out of touch with where the pro music market was heading. (This is a much too common failing of OSS developers.) If he had, he would have realized that "plug-ins" were how musicians wanted their software to integrate -- not a complicated "patchbay" that added latency, and needed "session managers" to save/restore a configuration. The latter approach is JACK, and it's a godawful load of crap which I believe has done more to deter musicians from using Linux than anything else.

JACK needs to be taken out back, and shot dead. It's one of the most horrible examples of an "audio patchbay system" I've seen.

P.S. If you're a musician who has done any pro music production on Windows/Apple, and you're now trying out Linux, and you just can't understand why you're having so much trouble getting even the most simple use of sound working on Linux... It's not you. It's JACK.

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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by Gps »

If you don't like it dont use it ?

I remember trying it out, but because it crashed I gave up.

Now I am just using the default sound system of open SUSE.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by sysrqer »

Edgy as ever. Don't use it if you don't need it, simple as that.

Funny though, I'm seeing more and more Windows users interested in using Jack and things such as Carla.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by flappix »

Plugins and Jack are not mutually exclusive. Plugins are managed by your DAW or a simple plugin-host while Jack allows you to connect different music applications and use them together.

If you are overstrained by the routing possibilities of Jack I suggest that you use a single DAW like Ardour. It manages everything for you and don't have to care about any Jack routing in the background.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by sunrat »

I use JACK and it enables me to do several things not possible with ALSA, or Windows for that matter. It is a bit of a mindfuck to learn it initially and I'd never recommend it to someone starting out. But it's certainly not mandatory to use it.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by raboof »

I dislike that you choose to present this as a personal attack on the author(s) of the software, rather than a critique of the software itself.
j_e_f_f_g wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:03 pm added latency
I'm not convinced of this 'added latency' you keep talking about with JACK. While it is true the machinery in JACK (notably the context switching between processes) will undoubtedly have some overhead, it is not obvious that that overhead would lead to added latency in practice.

In viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13766 you added JACK support to eDrummer to be able to do a comparison. I think that was a great idea! Doing that experiment the lowest latency I could achieve with ALSA directly was the same latency I could achieve with JACK in the mix (though it looked different in the UI because of a coding mistake).
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

raboof wrote:you choose a personal attack on the author
Well, I suppose I could have said that the design of JACK seems at odds with the way that the market was heading, and didn't incorporate the good ideas of successful products, nor avoid the mistakes of failed products (seems to have been designed without benefit of outside influence).

But, besides the fact that this amounts to the very same critique, it's almost impossible not to conclude that the problem was that the developer didn't research other designs, nor the market. After all, how else do you explain the above critique? Do you think Paul deliberately designed software that was so frustrating to so many people who have had experience using pro music software? (Look at all the posts from folks who have had relatively little hassle "getting their sound working" on every music product they own... until they encounter JACK. It's the main source of audio problems for musicians trying Linux).

Do you think he looked at a market full of effects and virtual instrument plugins, and not one "patchbay" product, and then said...


I could write something that makes those plugins directly run on linux (linVST), or something that helps developers port to linux (that framework fellipe does). But the market tells me what I should make is a complicated patchbay/router.


Of course not. Paul's not stupid. It's just that, when paul decided to do jack, for whatever reasons, he obviously wasn't heeding the market or what musicians were using and not using. And ultimately, JACK is a bad thing. If that's a personal attack... well ok.. guilty. I don't have any ill will toward paul. Seems nice, and far too polite for an aussie. I just want to kill jack.

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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by JamesPeters »

Jack is something I don't use, since I prefer to have my "DAW ecosystem" be contained within the DAW (plugins). That's the way I worked in Windows and OSX, and I find it convenient.

Using a DAW in Linux, however, historically had some limits and workarounds. Only recently have there been more VST plugins people could use within DAWs. Some effects (especially virtual instruments) weren't made to be used "in the DAW" though; they were made as standalone, requiring them to be connected to/from the DAW (which required Jack). If I recall correctly, even Ardour required Jack for i/o until fairly recently when ALSA was added (I vaguely recall needing to use Jack with Ardour around 10 years ago). When Reaper for Linux was first made, the priority was for Jack i/o too, and more complete ALSA support came later.

So now you can use ALSA in your Linux DAWs, but maybe it wasn't feasible before and Jack was the only way to do your setup. Jack was just part of the Linux DAW landscape you needed to learn. And if you were using Linux, chances are you didn't mind having to learn a bit more.

Consider the functionality Jack provides in general, and how it can be useful in some circumstances. If I want audio playing simultaneously from various applications (from a single audio device), I can't use ALSA alone; chances are I need to use Jack. If I want to record the output of one application to another, again I'd probably need to use Jack. Some people love this ability.

Also remember that Jack and Qjackctl (etc.) weren't designed in 2021. they've been around a long time. Some of the design was "a sign of the times" and due to the nature of the Linux "ecosystem" in which it had to function. Perhaps with more current kernels/distros, it could benefit from some changes/updates. Just consider though how many people you have noticed on forums who still use distros which are several years old, hesitant to update for various reasons.

Jack can complicate things in your setup, requiring some extra effort to configure your system. If you don't need it, my advice is to not use it. Want to use plugins contained within the DAW? Then you're like me, and ALSA is the way to go. But even if you want to use Reaper while playing Youtube videos (I don't know why some people care about this sort of thing), you're going to want to use Jack.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

raboof wrote: you added JACK support to eDrummer to be able to do a comparison. Doing that experiment the lowest latency I could achieve with ALSA directly was the same latency I could achieve with JACK
You set EDrummer to use ALSA, then recorded the room sound of you tapping a key on your PC, and the sound waves coming out of your speakers. (And probably used a microphone that wasn't performant enough to even remotely measure the latencies you thought you were measuring). You then set EDrummer to use JACK, and repeated this "test recording" whose margin of error was/is completely unknown (because it wasn't even remotely accurate).

Then you compared the two recordings in Audacity in an attempt to measure latencies that are magnitudes smaller than the "test variances" inherent in your test equipment and methodology. That "test" is absolutely pointless. You only thing you were looking at in those waveforms is any variance in your own test procedure -- not in the latency of JACK versus ALSA. It's no surprise that your test failed to measure any latencies in the range one would expect. I would have been shocked if it had. Let's have no more talk of that "test".

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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by bluzee »

Jack is the main reason I got interested in music production on computer. It's an essential tool I could not do without. It's been on my machine for nigh on 20 years or so. It has never failed me.

Not everyone has the exact same work flow which you find so perfect. What you find perfect I find crippling.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

sysrqer wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:54 pm more Windows users interested in using Jack and things such as Carla.
Wanna bet there are more linux folks using windows plugins, and setting their DAW to use ALSA (not jack), than there are windows folks using jack and carla on their OS?

Minimum wager is 1,000 dollars. I want to upgrade my computer. And you're paying.

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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by sysrqer »

I'd probably take those odds, pretty marginal on both sides of your coin.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by Michael Willis »

j_e_f_f_g wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:03 pmwas out of touch with where the pro music market was heading
You missed a great opportunity to say he didn't know jack about where the pro music market was heading.
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by bebob99 »

j_e_f_f_g wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:03 pm If you're a musician who has done any pro music production on Windows/Apple, and you're now trying out Linux, and you just can't understand why you're having so much trouble getting even the most simple use of sound working on Linux... It's not you. It's JACK.
Woah! Seems I triggered some discussion with my statement. :shock:

Well, I'm not a "musician" at all. I do play the Saxophone for a few years now on amateur level in a wind band. Not the lead one. I don't do "music production" either.

But I have some basic needs for my everyday Computer use that does involve audio and that turned out to be more complicated than thought. I still have to translate everything here into "Windows Language" and I'm quite certain that I get it wrong more often than not.

Some time ago it all was very easy. I had a PC with an embedded sound card. A headphone jack on the front and a line-out on the back. The latter got a PC speaker system connected with a desktop dial, so that I can turn the speaker on and off and set the volume, parallel to the headphones. Easy cheesy, even with Windows - once you get the driver set so that it don't silences the back audio when a headphone is connected on the front.

Later I added an external USB audio interface (UR242) where I can connect a good microphone to make recordings of my exercises. The interface allows for an external audio source (iPad with AnyTune). The OUT however is wired to a Stereo with good speakers, but normally I will use the PC sound system still wired to the internal sound card. And the headphones are connected to the external interfaces for the obvious reason of zero latency monitoring. And since I don't want to wire it all anew for every different application, I'd prefer to keep it that way (or another that works equally well). And at last I have a Piano that has it's own MIDI but with an USB cable, and not wired to the external audio MIDI DIN sockets.

In Windows I quickly found about VoiceMeeter that can easily take all audio inputs, no matter what interface (and the webcam too) and patch it to whatever output I like. And it keeps it there. So there is virtually ZERO hassle when I listen to something and get a "hey, lend me your ear" moment where I turn up the volume in the PC audio to play it loud. The audio is streamed synchronously to both interfaces in the background.

The same when I want the audio from the iPad playing on the PC speaker (into the USB interface and out to the internal sound card). Or if I want to have the Webcam Micro out to the conference, but the background music just into my Ears.

As you see, there is no DAW involved at all. Not normally. I do use one from time to time, but mostly I have just "daily need". Video conferencing, monitoring my Sax lessons together with the playalong, playing music from the network library or the external player. At times in the headphones, at times in the speaker, at times both.

That's where I was told to talk to "Jack" when switching to Linux. I do not know better, but it seems to be the only way to get more than one audio interface working together in a way that is as comfortable as it was in Windows. Or maybe even at all.

"Standard Linux" seems to work similar to "Standard Windows", i.e, choose ONE interface and finish, so I can use either the USB audio OR the internal one. As I have learned, "Jack" and Family should be the thing to use, to get all options back again.

Meanwhile I did cut off the Stereo to free the Line-Out from the USB Audio to connect it to my PC-speaker, as I didn't manage to get it done right. :cry:

But it still leaves me with the problem that the sound is crackling every other time I wake up my PC from sleep. "restart jack" does rectify that. But I cannot nail it down. It is NOT X-Runs. At least the Counter in "Ubuntu Studio Controls" does not show the crackles, although it still counts upward slowly over time, even with 512x3 buffers.

And then there ARE times when I fire up Reaper (that's what I am used to) to record my session where it is totally OK to just use ONE interface but preferable with low latency. ASIO as we used to say on Windows. A Ryzen 7 3800XT, 32GB RAM plus SSD should be plenty enough power to record a simple mono audio stream at 48kHz without glitches. Shouldn't it? Well, I guess it should. :?

If this all can be done with "standard Linux audio" (Pulse? ALSA?), I forget about Jak et al.

Edit:
I just saw that my opening posts attracted some really promising suggestions getting this rectified, so I will try to keep my problems there instead spilling them all over the board.
I'm new to Linux. So please speak slowly and try to avoid glibberish. :roll:
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Re: JACK is Hannibal Lector with an ear fetish

Post by JamesPeters »

bebob99 wrote: Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:16 pm And then there ARE times when I fire up Reaper (that's what I am used to) to record my session where it is totally OK to just use ONE interface but preferable with low latency. ASIO as we used to say on Windows. A Ryzen 7 3800XT, 32GB RAM plus SSD should be plenty enough power to record a simple mono audio stream at 48kHz without glitches. Shouldn't it? Well, I guess it should. :?

If this all can be done with "standard Linux audio" (Pulse? ALSA?), I forget about Jak et al.
I use ALSA in Reaper with 64 samples buffer (4 periods) for stable performance until I push my CPU to 90% or higher. (It's a Ryzen 7 3700X, so I'm doing artificially loaded-down-with-plugins test projects to notice this.) I can lower the buffer even more, but it's not as stable with high CPU use if I do that.

If you have a problem with stability in Reaper with your audio device, you need to consider the following:

-(If your audio device is USB) Have you disabled USB_autosuspend? I found that step to be important for reliable performance with USB audio in ALSA and Jack.

-Are you running a lowlatency or realtime kernel? (To check, run the following in Terminal: "uname -a". If the output shows "PREEMPT" in it, you're good.)

-Did you set your CPU frequency governor to "performance"? A throttling CPU isn't good for low latency audio tasks.

There are more steps to follow if you're using Jack:

https://jackaudio.org/faq/linux_rt_config.html

And yes I know it says "you do NOT need an RT kernel to use RT scheduling" for Jack, but if you're trying to do low latency audio work, you should use a lowlatency or realtime kernel or you won't be able to set your buffer sizes low.

If you've done all that, I don't know what to say. I've had no problems with a few computers, for the last 2 years, using Reaper at low latency with ALSA (or Jack that I might use from time to time), with various audio devices.
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