Hi there everyone, this is my first post.
I've been using AV Linux for about a month and have not been able to use my mic with JACK. I have a USB mic going in and a headphone jack going out. PulseAudio picks it up just fine, and I see levels in pavucontrol. But Jack doesn't provide it as an input device to the system. i.e. I can't see or use it in my DAW, nor does it appear in the Connections window for me to create that connection.
I am aware that "JACK wants to control the whole soundcard", and that this creates problems with PulseAudio. But AV Linux is meant to provide "seamless integration" between PA and JACK. Maybe that claim is true, but at the very least, it is extremely seamful on my machine. I have followed the instructions to set up audio in the AV Linux manual, to no avail. I am very confused.
My mic appears as an "interface" in the settings of qjackctl. I was under the impression that "interfaces" were each separate sound cards? But I don't think my mic has a dedicated sound card. Regardless, if I set my mic as the interface, it works. Pavucontrol sees the JACK sink as an input (getting sound from my mic) and the mic itself does not appear there. I can also can record the mic from my DAW as "system capture / 1". However, now there is no output. So that obviously is not acceptable either. Setting up separate input and output interfaces in the advanced tab has the same result: input, no audio.
After each setting change, I killed the JACK server, killed pulseaudio, then restarted the JACK server.
After resetting back to defaults, I have no input and no output on the system. Literally with the exact same settings as before, when I had output only. That happened just now as I was testing the settings again for accuracy at this post. So now I will have to deal with that. Hopefully it fixes on a restart, or I will have another four hours of fruitless googling ahead of me.
I am a musician, not a technician. At this point I am simply sick of hearing about how "powerful" JACK is. I feel extremely disempowered using this distro. I heard that Cadence made JACK easy to use, but it's just qjackctl with a prettier window. Is this all a prank? I just want to have one input, and one output. That is literally all.
I am utterly baffled by JACK and no matter how much I read I don't seem to learn anything. I feel like there are assumptions behind JACK's design that have not been explained to me. Like why is "system" an audio device, but my mic and speakers are not? Except my mic is an audio device in the options menu. And I honestly can't tell which "Hw" is my speakers, if any of them even is. Can JACK record in multiple channels? Because there's only one "input" dropdown in the settings. I'm not explicitly seeking answers to those questions here. Just it's like I said, it seems like there's just something fundamental that I have not grasped. Because nothing about this makes any sense or follows a logic I can comprehend.
I like everything else about AV Linux. I want to keep using it. But this is my last stop.
Apologies for being a bit dramatic. I am at the end of my rope here. PipeWire is not an option, as the reason I switched to AV Linux in the first place is because PipeWire caused completely different horrible problems with my pro audio setup.