JACK almost working

[Joe Bain]

2008/7/12 Carla <poppinlockin at yahoo.com.au>:

> Gosh it is confusing as to where i type. I have never typed at the bottom of
> emails before. Ok well I get really no where with Jack. I have read every
> tutorial in site but I don't really understand where to go with it at all. I
> am not plugging in any external devices except a microphone sometimes so do
> i really need Jack? I used to have audacity on my notebook and happily used
> it but then someone told me about Jack and it has been a pain from then on.
> I am still pretty new to Linux so I would like to be able to do something
> simple before I get complicated. I doubt with my lack of funds will ever get
> any more sophisticated in my setup.
> Carla(Thanks)

Hello again Carla,

If you're happy using Audacity on its own then there's no real reason
for you to use jack. Jack does have lots of benefits of course,
especially if you want to do more complex things, using soft synths,
richer editing and multitracking with Ardour, live effects on guitars
or vocals, and there's other things too.

It's still not clear where you're stuck with jack, so it's hard to
tell you what you need to do to fix it. It sounds like you're not
really sure about the general idea of it though so I'll do my best to
explain that.

Essentially Jack allows you to take any audio output, this can be your
soundcard (i.e your microphone), a software synthesizer, a recording
your've made in audacity or another program, anything at all, and put
that into any input, like another rcording program, an effects program
(like JackRack) or your soundcard again (your speakers). You can take
one output and put it to multiple inputs or multiple outputs into one
input, it's very flexible.

It seems redundant for me to explain the whole interface, but the
important part, the connections window, is explained <a
href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToQjackCtlConnections">here</a>.
Although this is a bit old and the connections window now uses the
'ALSA' tab to control midi conections with the 'midi' tab becoming
somewhat mysterious, I haven't worked out myself what it does now.

I hope this makes things more clear, and please let us know how you
get on or if you want more help.

Joe