QJackCtl Maximum Volume

[jwhitmore]

With help here I've been able to enable QJackCtl on two laptops, and get system audio to get routed through Jack, but the maximum volume from jack is much lower then it was before I moved things to Jack. I can't find any settings to change the maximum volume?

[jwhitmore]

A further problem to add to this problem. With the very low maximum volume I plugged headphones into the laptop, but there is no audio out of the headphones at all. Obviously that's another setting in Jack?

[sysrqer]

Look in alsamixer, check for muted channels and low volumes.

[matlo]

qjackctl / jackd do only routing like a pachbay.
Volume is a problem of your sound-interface-device or your jackclients.

[jwhitmore]

Eventually moved to Ubuntu 19.10 to resolve these issues. That got the volume and headphones sorted. openSUSE Tumbleweed had a more up to date version of everything, rolling distro, which was great but audio just wasn't working out for me.

Thanks for the responses, they did help narrow down by ruling out parts of the system.

[matlo]

Jack is not only audio-routing because you can connect several outputs to one input. So it's also mixing. To prevent the output device from being overdriven you can connect jack-bridge as display and you have to make sure that the output jack clients don't get too loud.

[jwhitmore]

I spoke too soon. I obviously didn't have audio 100% setup to use Jack so now when it's fully configured. I have no control of the volume setting of the laptop. I can use the keyboards function/ctrl key combinations to adjust the volume or set it using the menu on top of the desktop where wifi and battery details are displayed but changing the volume has no effect on jack at all.

Additionally I use the instructions I was pointed to at http://marzen.de/Holger/pulseaudio_and_jack/

those half work as when I power up the laptop the jack sink module hasn't been stated so I have to manually execute:

$ pactl load-module module-jack-sink channels=2

before I do anything else. So on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed the sink module does auto load, but there's no audio from headphones, whereas on Ubuntu the sink module doesn't load on powerup, there is audio from headphone socket but there's no volume control. I know it's early days and I've tried limited distros, but I wonder do various bits work on various platforms but none of them have everything working. I was hoping to move on to the Behringer mixer's audio interface but I'll have to leave this and maybe try another distro to see what I can get working.

[jwhitmore]

Got it I think I now have volume working, but not the line

pactl load-module module-jack-sink channels=2

which isn't being run from /etc/pulse/default.pa only the source is added

[sysrqer]

Volume buttons and controls usually adjust pulseaudio do they will have no effect if you are playing something in jack.

You can change what command the volume buttons issue, set them to control alsa volume and it will work as you're expecting. Not at computer now but look in to alsamixer and how to control the alsa level with commands.

[jwhitmore]

When volume wasn't working I did try alsamixer and it just gave me another interface to control a slider, which had no effect on audio output. When it's not working it just ain't working and nothing seemed to shift it. It now all appears to be happier and volume is working as it should. So I'm not moving anything and I'll stick with Ubuntu 19.10 for a while and see how far I get. I will start a new thread on here as I've not hit a wall with adding a USB Audio interface of the Behringer mixer

It does appear that this whole Linux Audio stuff is very temperamental. So for example when I first installed Ubuntu 19.10 again the volume didn't work, regardless of mechanism used to change the volume. Then it suddenly started working, and I've no idea why. That means when it eventually falls over I've no idea how to get it working again. Just one of those things.

[sysrqer]

That sounds like you needed to choose the right sound card by pressing the appropriate F key. Sometimes the right card isn't chosen by default so you might have been adjusting the levels for an unused hdmi output or something like that.

It's not ideal if you need to mess with these things but it's just the way it is, at least for now. If you have found something that works then stick with it but most likely it was just a setting that was different by default, there's no majic going on in the background between different distros.