Pulseaudio/Jack in Ubuntu Hardy

[Gonz Hauser]

Hi!

I had a problem with ardour/jack/pulseaudio in Ubuntu Hardy and I was 
told to take it to the mailing list. I cc'd parties that may be 
interested. Please ignore this mail if you are not.

The related bugs in Launchpad are:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ardour/+bug/220576
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/214256

The problem is that ardour as installed by "aptitude install ardour" 
doesn't work. Recording is possible but playback doesn't work.
I was able to resolve the issue by manually starting jack with "jackd -d 
alsa".

My only concern is a working ardour after installing. For me it is 
extremely annoying to have manually fiddling with jackd.
I also do not care about latency or similar stuff.
I also imagine a new user (read composer/musician) to linux who 
immediately returns to windows after playback in ardour doesn't work.

Also it is not possible to use for example mplayer and ardour at the 
same time.

I was told that configuration of jack is a non-trivial thing to do 
because a professional user normally has a second sound card and jack 
has to be configured to use that (professional) equipment.

My opinion is that it should be possible to provide a _default_ 
configuration where jackd connects to pulseaudio (this is what 
module-jack-source is for, right?).

Let me repeat my two concerns:

1. Ardour in Ubuntu Hardy doesn't work out of the box
2. It is not possible to use mplayer and ardour at the same time

I believe it is possible manually fix this up but I have still the 
opinion that it should be possible to provide a simple default 
configuration.
So please convince me that I'm wrong (and it isn't possible to have a 
working ardour on a notebook) or tell me how this can be resolved.
You put so much hard work into ardour/jack/pulseaudio that it should not 
  fail because of a small configuration mistake.

Thanks for your work/ideas/help,

Gonz