Last version of Jack?

Unofficial support for the KXStudio Linux distribution and applications.
More info at http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1526
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 137 times

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

j_e_f_f_g wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:11 pm Forget about jack. Distros are already replacing it with pipewire.

It's a linux tradition that, as soon as something is stable and supported, it must be replaced with something new and buggy.
Darn it. Are you sure? Jack has been in the standard repo's of any distro for ages. Why would it be ditched?

What good is an audio "processing engine" if no applications support it. Now I'm gonna have to fiddle with DAWs (Qtractor?) that are built for Jack that "think" they are dealing with Jack but in reality are dealing with Pipewire (acting like Jack) in a few years/months time. Just like bridging Jack and Pulseaudio.
  1. Does anybody know if Pipewire will replace that wretched Pulseaudio too?
  2. Does anybody know why Pipewire has been developed (after all: we have Jack)?
  3. Are the devs of Pipewire active in any forum? Do they even friggin' care?
  4. Am I being off topic? I've ignore everything Pipewire in these here forums because I've no need for it.
  5. Now it's gonna be even harder to explain to Linux beginners how to use audio on Linux.
User avatar
sysrqer
Established Member
Posts: 2520
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:47 pm
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 148 times
Contact:

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by sysrqer »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 11:40 am
Does anybody know if Pipewire will replace that wretched Pulseaudio too?
Yes it will and already does very well.

Does anybody know why Pipewire has been developed (after all: we have Jack)?
I'm sure they have a mission statement somewhere but it aims to unify it all so you don't need two different audio servers (amongst many other things I'm sure)

Are the devs of Pipewire active in any forum? Do they even friggin' care?
They have an issue tracker which they are active on, the same way as the Jack and Pulseaudio maintainers. Not sure why you would think they don't care?

Now it's gonna be even harder to explain to Linux beginners how to use audio on Linux.
If they are happy with pipewire then pretty much all they will have to do to start making music is open their DAW/apps (once it is default in most distros which won't be for a while yet). Getting started with piprewire couldn't be much simpler and certainly easier than the path of Jack and Pulseaudio.
User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1526
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 137 times

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

sysrqer wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 11:58 am
Linuxmusician01 wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 11:40 am
Does anybody know if Pipewire will replace that wretched Pulseaudio too?
Yes it will and already does very well.

Does anybody know why Pipewire has been developed (after all: we have Jack)?
I'm sure they have a mission statement somewhere but it aims to unify it all so you don't need two different audio servers (amongst many other things I'm sure)

Are the devs of Pipewire active in any forum? Do they even friggin' care?
They have an issue tracker which they are active on, the same way as the Jack and Pulseaudio maintainers. Not sure why you would think they don't care?

Now it's gonna be even harder to explain to Linux beginners how to use audio on Linux.
If they are happy with pipewire then pretty much all they will have to do to start making music is open their DAW/apps (once it is default in most distros which won't be for a while yet). Getting started with piprewire couldn't be much simpler and certainly easier than the path of Jack and Pulseaudio.
First of all: thank you for your clarifying reply. I'm just frustrated that after all these years I may have to learn something new that might make things even more complex for me when I already have a hard time getting my head around "things audio" on Linux as it is. Hence the rant. I'll calm down in a few years, like I always do. ;)

Luckily we do not have to deal with Pipewire and Pulseaudio at the same time. The way I see it now (I might be horribly wrong) is that Pipewire is some sort of replacement for the Pulseaudio/Gstreamer SnAFU. Pipewire appears to be audio and video.

What I meant by my "do the Pipewire devs even care" remark was do they care that this makes things harder and makes people shy away from Linux. I now think that it's meant to make things more easy. However, that's only the case if software will support it. DAW's nowadays rely on Jack for proper routing of stuff. I fear that some of my favorite old not actively developed software will not be updated to use Pipewire and I'm stuck w/ a deprecated Jack version to keep using it etc. I still like the audio players Audacious (not to be mistaken with Audacity) and Qmmp for their clear UI. What's gonna happen to them?

You say everything will be fine. Are you sure everything will work out of the box for new Linuxers? Pulseaudio works out of the box for (new) Linuxers too. But as soon as we want to do anything serious (like something as basic as a DAW) we have to figure out how to permanently disable that auto-spawning PulseAudio and learn how Jack works.

I hope my favorite software (Qtractor) will support Pipewire and that it's easy to understand and to configure.
folderol
Established Member
Posts: 2072
Joined: Mon Sep 28, 2015 8:06 pm
Location: Here, of course!
Has thanked: 224 times
Been thanked: 400 times
Contact:

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by folderol »

My understanding is that pipewire has a full Jack emulation. If that is true, you shouldn't see any difference.
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1526
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 137 times

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

folderol wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 12:36 pm My understanding is that pipewire has a full Jack emulation. If that is true, you shouldn't see any difference.
I most certainly hope so. And I think that developers hope so too. ;)
User avatar
sysrqer
Established Member
Posts: 2520
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:47 pm
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 148 times
Contact:

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by sysrqer »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 12:32 pm
First of all: thank you for your clarifying reply. I'm just frustrated that after all these years I may have to learn something new that might make things even more complex for me when I already have a hard time getting my head around "things audio" on Linux as it is. Hence the rant. I'll calm down in a few years, like I always do. ;)

Luckily we do not have to deal with Pipewire and Pulseaudio at the same time. The way I see it now (I might be horribly wrong) is that Pipewire is some sort of replacement for the Pulseaudio/Gstreamer SnAFU. Pipewire appears to be audio and video.

What I meant by my "do the Pipewire devs even care" remark was do they care that this makes things harder and makes people shy away from Linux. I now think that it's meant to make things more easy. However, that's only the case if software will support it. DAW's nowadays rely on Jack for proper routing of stuff. I fear that some of my favorite old not actively developed software will not be updated to use Pipewire and I'm stuck w/ a deprecated Jack version to keep using it etc. I still like the audio players Audacious (not to be mistaken with Audacity) and Qmmp for their clear UI. What's gonna happen to them?

You say everything will be fine. Are you sure everything will work out of the box for new Linuxers? Pulseaudio works out of the box for (new) Linuxers too. But as soon as we want to do anything serious (like something as basic as a DAW) we have to figure out how to permanently disable that auto-spawning PulseAudio and learn how Jack works.

I hope my favorite software (Qtractor) will support Pipewire and that it's easy to understand and to configure.
I understand how you feel, I have to say that when I first heard about it I thought 'oh no, not another layer of complexity' but I have warmed to it considerably. When using it there is very little difference and you might not even know you are using it. One thing I really like is the fact that all of your soundcards show on the qjackctl graph with their names, a very small details admittedly but it's a welcome change.

I don't know much about Gstreamer or pipewire's video capabilities/aims but I think you're right, I'm fairly sure it isn't only audio.

It will make things much easier once there is more adoption. Even now it's pretty easy to set up or even swap between it and pulse/jack. For a lot of people pipewire is good to go with default settings and just works, there's no messing around trying to get sinks to work etc. Of course you can fine tune it in a similar way you can with Jack to adjust latency or sample rates. One neat feature is that these settings can be per application so you don't necessarily need everything running at 256 blocks/44.1khz etc.

So far I have only come across one or two applications that are problematic with pipewire, EmissionControl2 and (I think) Audiostellar. Having read through some reports it seems this is more of an issue with rtkit than it is with pipewire as such.

Audio players will still work. Some are already adding dedicated pipewire outputs (deadbeef, mpd) but if you set it to output to pulseaudio it will still work.

But as was just mentioned, programs don't need to officially support pipewire.
User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1526
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 137 times

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

sysrqer wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:05 pm [...] One thing I really like is the fact that all of your soundcards show on the qjackctl graph with their names, a very small details admittedly but it's a welcome change.
Wait a minute: Qjackctl works with Pipewire? Thanks for the info! :)
sysrqer wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:05 pm [...] Audio players will still work. Some are already adding dedicated pipewire outputs (deadbeef, mpd) but if you set it to output to pulseaudio it will still work.

But as was just mentioned, programs don't need to officially support pipewire.
It's a relief that apps do not have to be rewritten! :)
User avatar
sysrqer
Established Member
Posts: 2520
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:47 pm
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 148 times
Contact:

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by sysrqer »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:50 pm.
Wait a minute: Qjackctl works with Pipewire? Thanks for the info! :)
Indeed! I can't remember if you can set the block size etc for pipewire's jack implementation with it but you can certainly use the graph to make connections and the patchbay to remember connections!
alex stone
Established Member
Posts: 350
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 7:39 am
Has thanked: 61 times
Been thanked: 53 times

Re: Last version of Jack?

Post by alex stone »

Anyone using midi though pipewire (i.e. jackmidi), and if so, how does it perform?
Post Reply