[ubuntu-studio-devel] Audio

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi Eylul,

Jack is a sound server for audio production purpose. For good reasons it
defaults to 32-bit float. There's nearly no good reason to decide
against this default. The bit depth used by the sound server has
nothing to do with e.g. CD compatibility.

If this app should make setting up an audio environment easier for
noobs, only offer to select between all available sample rates and
don't provide any choice to change the bit depth at all.

The default sample rate should be 48000 Hz. Sometimes it could make
sense to chose 44100 Hz, so maybe you could recommend both. Other
sample rates seldom make sense. Anyway, all sample rates should be
provided, but selecting another bit rate instead of 32-bit float very
unlikely is useful for anybody using averaged x86 or x86_64, aka amd64
hardware and common Linux audio apps.

>I added your wording with one difference (using latency instead of
>response) but happy to change that back if need be. That option can be
>more verbose too, but will require a bit of a layout tweak in that
>case.

It's not my wording, I quoted Audiobus settings. 128 frames isn't the
frame size providing the lowest latency, just Audiobus mentions this. I
wouldn't add a recommendation, but the information about device load and
response/latency/delay is useful, even a default of 256 is useful for a
lot of audio tasks, smaller would be better, but with a max of 256 it
becomes interesting for e.g. guitar effects and smaller than 256
easily could cause xruns. For anything else 1024 might be the better
default. 1024 is the default provided by Jack.

For experienced audio users and novices willing to learn your app is
crap. The target group are users who don't have a clue and who are
unwilling to learn. You need to make it easy for them, but actually you
make it harder, by mixing jack settings, with settings that are not
directly related to jack and by providing the same choice jack
provides. Don't!

Provide a first choice, 1. music production, 2. other
audio productions (radio etc.) and 3. audio for anything else. Don't
provide to chose between PA bridge and things like this. Disable PA for
music production and enable it for other audio productions and don't
launch Jack at all, for anything else.

Everybody understanding the terms and/or willing to learn should purge
this app. Everybody who wants it as easy as possible, should simply
get an option to chose between sane defaults, don't offer grotesque
options, such as different bit depths.

Regards,
Ralf