State of Jack as a full pulsaudio replacement

[Kaj Ailomaa]

On 05/05/2012 10:32 PM, Len Ovens wrote:
>
> On Sat, May 5, 2012 3:39 am, Kaj Ailomaa wrote:
>
>
>> I think the main problem is not pulseaudio itself anymore. It would be
>> nice to have a simple way to turn it off. I think it's more about
>> desktop control than the server itself that is the issue these days.
>
> I have found that turning pulse off is not needed. Pulse is quite happy to
> sit doing nothing taking up minimal resources if the PA-jack bridge module
> is unloaded. If PA is not bridged to jack then it is not forced to run at
> whatever latency jack is running at.
>

Pulseaudio can create problems even when not using the jack bridge, as 
there may be conflicts between jack and pulseaudio, but only if you make 
it happen.
Some people might want to switch pulseaudio off in order to use another 
desktop sound system instead, without the need to uninstall anything.

Also, it is not very intuitive to enable/disable the jack bridge at the 
moment. I don't think anyone new to it will understand how it is done 
without reading documentation. There's no gui control for it. A simpler 
way may be to just turn pulseaudio off instead of turning the bridge off.


> PA-jack problem two, more than one audio card. Turn off the card not being
> used in pulse... makes a big difference with things like stuttering.
>

How do you turn off a card that is not being used?
Pulseaudio will start to stutter when using the jack bridge for me, but 
if I remember correctly, this has only started to happen when playing 
flash video, and not directly, but after loading a few videos.

> There is no perfect solution yet. (maybe never) But just as in a hardware
> studio where patches have to be changed depending on use... care needs to
> be taken to set up jack and pulse in the virtual studio too. It's not
> auto, but this is a good thing, it allows me to get around problems that
> an auto mode might not.
>
> Pulse is what lots of apps are set up for. It is easier to change the
> routing on one piece of SW (pulse) than to reconfigure every pulse client
> to hit jack. It is a lot less work to just ship the same multimedia as
> other ubuntu distros. I don't like PA much either, but I use it anyway. I
> just have to be a little more aware of how it works than the average
> desktop user. As someone interesting in a low latency kernel, I've already
> taken one step in that direction and shown an interest in learning more.
>
> US is for those who have a desire to get more out of their equipment than
> the average desktop user, if it is tuning the audio/midi setup or
> calibrating a monitor. Time for more documentation. It looks like we need
> a page just on setting up sound..
>