Continuously auto-route all system-audio through a specified element in Carla before output?

[MxBit]

Greetings friends,

Is there a way to, let's say - use a filter or eq in front of your system audio output in Carla?
How can we circumvent a direct auto-connection to output.

Is there a way of catching new connections, and letting them pass through chosen VSTs,
instead of connecting directly to output?

Of course we can do this by hand for single chosen inputs, over and over,
but it's really unpleasant, for example starting a video in your browser,
the connection is built, you replug - and as soon as your video ends,
the connection auto-closes.

I imagine, a solving - to become some legit thing to hardcode into Carla2.

Lets say rightclicking on a standard output-device and choosing "pre-route".
So carla shall tell all incoming connections, to standard connect through a singe list of pre-chosen element(s),
where it can safety pass the same amount and type of channels, down to the standard-output-device itself.

Greetings
mx

[bluebell]

• jack-plumbing or jack_plumbing, depending on its version
• qjackctl

Here's an excerpt from my ~/.jack-plumbing. Whenever Qtractor is started its connection to "system:playback" is disconnected and a connection to "main" (a jack_thru instance) ist made:

Code: Select all

(connect    "Qtractor:Master/out_1" "main:input_1")
(connect    "Qtractor:Master/out_2" "main:input_2")
(disconnect "Qtractor:Master/out_.*" "system:playback_.*")

[LAM]

Since by default every PA app will create connections, autoconnect, and destroy connections when stopped/paused, if you use PipeWire, a "native" solution is sadly a bit more involved than a JACK one:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... al-Devices
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire ... lter-Chain
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWi ... processing

I use RaySession to achieve that, on top of JACK+PA. I setup the applications and connections once, save them in a session in RaySession and I don't have to think about it anymore.
The good thing about using the PA-JACK bridge is that you end up with a predictable route for every PA application too, since the JACK-PA sinks and sources will not change. The only thing I had to configure for this setup is disabling the JACK-PA sink/sources autoconnect. In this way I can save the connections within the session, and forget about them.

[bluebell]

Audacity does jack-connections with varying names as well. My .jack-plumbing rules to direct it to a jack_thru instance named "main" are:

Code: Select all

(connect    "alsa-jack\..*jackP\..*:out_000" "main:input_1")
(connect    "alsa-jack\..*jackP\..*:out_001" "main:input_2")
(disconnect "alsa-jack\..*jackP\..*:out_.*" "system:playback_.*")

[LAM]

In the newer version of Audacity (at least since 3.2), when using JACK backend, you can set which client to connect to/from.

I always used to run Audacity inside Carla, if I needed fixed ports, and that solved also the ports appearing/disappearing during recording/playback.

[MxBit]

Thanks for the quick answer!

I made the transisition to pipewire quite recently, before I remember having a jack-alsa-sink as output, might have been the one I was looking for - but it's gone with pipewire.

I tried to add something like a default-null-sink and played arround with RaySessions, quite a beautiful patchbay! But still I have not yet found how to add a working output sink for my pipewire-jack, to use it in between the ouput.

I now use EasyEffects Software to add effects like EQ's the ouput, but still no custom VST's though.

Hope some nice developer, add's something alike to carla itself.