4 ms·

I actually find PulseAudio vs. JACK incredibly annoying. I like to play around with "professional" audio. I don't consider it professional, but more relevantl

I actually find PulseAudio vs. JACK incredibly annoying. I like to play around with "professional" audio. I don't consider it professional, but more relevantly I like to play with certain apps that require JACK. It's certainly an RTFM thing, but last time I didn't know how to get PulseAudio to go away. I wrote a shell script to keep killing it in a loop (since it restarts itself) long enough to get JACK to take over. I know there must be better ways... Then inevitably once I've got JACK setup, I'll want to play some background music or watch some Flash video online without tearing down my JACK setup. Oops, does that audio player support JACK natively? Do I have that plugin installed? Can I run Pulse and have it direct output into JACK? None of this has worked smoothly in my experience. > users of JACK generally buy high-end hardware specifically for that purpose and know what they're doing This has not been my experience. I love to dabble, but apparently don't know what I'm doing.

pyre 13y ago
FYI on killing PulseAudio: * Turning off auto-respawn (from 2010, not sure if it's entirely accurate): http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/7130/2 http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/7130/2 * Script I used to use to get Skype and PulseAudio to play nice in the early days of PA: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=790889 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=790889
leephillips 13y ago
Reminds me of how I seem to need to purge anything related to "avahi" before I can get wireless networking to work. I don't know what that junk is for but I wish it wasn't installed by default.
- toyg 13y ago
  It provides compatibility with Apple's more recent network technologies (Bonjour/Rendezvous etc), plus probably other stuff I don't know anything about.
- thwarted 13y ago
  I don't know why it is generally enabled on "server" installations. That being said, the only time I've had a legit use of it was on a media server, running mediatomb, which uses avahi to do SSDP/mDNS/zeroconf/DNS-SD [1], and on the client running VLC (I think the "local network" options interface with avahi itself). Which actually ended up being quite nice. I usually disable it, and try to uninstall it completely, on other server installations. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking
  - marshray 13y ago
    I can't seem to install GVIM on Ubuntu without avahi. I wish I had more choice about it.
    - rammark 13y ago
      Try installing vim-gtk instead of vim-gnome.
      - marshray 13y ago
        IIRC, it would have required me to add the 'universe' repository.
    - kondor6c 13y ago
      try using Gen too the use flags allow for great flexibility and allow smaller packages.
dnewcome 13y ago
You can prefix your command with pasuspender to temporarily disable pulseaudio. This is usually what I do. It's kind of inconvenient and half the time I forget to do it, so sometimes I just write a little launcher script that includes it.
aclevernickname 13y ago
May I humbly recommend adding the KXstudio Repos (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas?name_filter=kxstudio https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas?name_filter=kxstudio) to your Ubuntu installation? the Cadence utility makes JACK configuration very painless, automagically setting up JACK to run everything, with ALSA loopback and PulseAudio bridges for input and output. Firefox/Flash/Phonon/Skype all route through PulseAudio, which gets sent to JACK. all ALSA-only applications get routed through Loopback, which gets sent to JACK. And you can route all of this sound (visually, if you use the Claudia app) to whatever processing or recording application you want. Two weeks ago, I spent 20 minutes with 3 KXStudio Laptops and a master KXStudio workstation, and got all the laptops acting as input slaves to pipe live instruments and mics to Ardour running on the workstation using Opus as the transferring codec. all it took was loading the network module into JACK, and making sure there was gigE/cat6 for networking. we had mp3's and FLAC's of the concert ready for the band to review before their roadies were done packing up the gear. As for high-end hardware, the laptops are using M-Audio Fast Track Pros and 10/10's. None of the hardware goes for more than $150, and we're using ultra-cheap AMD Fusion laptop slaves sourced from alibaba with an AMD A10-based workstation as master. We're at $2800, including 3 monitors. Because an AMD A10 with 12GB of RAM is stupid overpowered for audio production, we installed MacOS X via KVM and routed that output through JACK as well. WINE loads quite a few professional digital audio workstation packages, and a ton of VSTs, and wineasio makes them all work with JACK. Running all this emulation doesn't make the system feel sluggish at all. the main website is http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net, but the LiveCD downloadable there is based on Ubuntu 12.04. I installed raring, added the PPA's, and then installed packages. I like bleeding edge. but the official livecd is _very_ painless to install if you're having headaches configuring.
- fmoralesc 13y ago
  Whoa! These cadence utils are great! Bridging jack and pulseaudio has always been such a pain... Thanks for the link! In case anyone is interested: I'm using them on Arch, they are available through the AUR.
kyrias 13y ago
> It's certainly an RTFM thing, but last time I didn't know how to get PulseAudio to go away `pulseaudio -k`
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  PulseAudio instantly respawns from this if you have autospawn set to yes (and most distributions do, and it takes some effort to get it working without that). Typically when I want a quick-and-dirty "kill PulseAudio for real" solution I move /usr/bin/pulseaudio to /usr/bin/pulse-dead, issue pkill pulseaudio, and proceed until I want PA to come back to life, at which time I mv the binary back.
  - Hello71 13y ago
    pasuspender
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      That only works as long as the command it wraps is living. I could use that approach, but typically I don't just want pulseaudio dead while gedit or something is running, I want it dead until I decide that I want it back. It usually happens this way when I'm debugging an audio issue, so it'd be annoying to have PA constantly cycling that way.
      - kyrias 13y ago
        paususpender while true do done
        Hello71 13y ago
        pasuspender cat

pyre 13y ago

FYI on killing PulseAudio: * Turning off auto-respawn (from 2010, not sure if it's entirely accurate): http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/7130/2 http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/7130/2 * Script I used to use to get Skype and PulseAudio to play nice in the early days of PA: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=790889 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=790889

leephillips 13y ago

Reminds me of how I seem to need to purge anything related to "avahi" before I can get wireless networking to work. I don't know what that junk is for but I wish it wasn't installed by default.

toyg 13y ago
It provides compatibility with Apple's more recent network technologies (Bonjour/Rendezvous etc), plus probably other stuff I don't know anything about.
thwarted 13y ago
I don't know why it is generally enabled on "server" installations. That being said, the only time I've had a legit use of it was on a media server, running mediatomb, which uses avahi to do SSDP/mDNS/zeroconf/DNS-SD [1], and on the client running VLC (I think the "local network" options interface with avahi itself). Which actually ended up being quite nice. I usually disable it, and try to uninstall it completely, on other server installations. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_configuration_networking
- marshray 13y ago
  I can't seem to install GVIM on Ubuntu without avahi. I wish I had more choice about it.
  - rammark 13y ago
    Try installing vim-gtk instead of vim-gnome.
    - marshray 13y ago
      IIRC, it would have required me to add the 'universe' repository.
  - kondor6c 13y ago
    try using Gen too the use flags allow for great flexibility and allow smaller packages.

dnewcome 13y ago

You can prefix your command with pasuspender to temporarily disable pulseaudio. This is usually what I do. It's kind of inconvenient and half the time I forget to do it, so sometimes I just write a little launcher script that includes it.

aclevernickname 13y ago

May I humbly recommend adding the KXstudio Repos (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas?name_filter=kxstudio https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas?name_filter=kxstudio) to your Ubuntu installation? the Cadence utility makes JACK configuration very painless, automagically setting up JACK to run everything, with ALSA loopback and PulseAudio bridges for input and output. Firefox/Flash/Phonon/Skype all route through PulseAudio, which gets sent to JACK. all ALSA-only applications get routed through Loopback, which gets sent to JACK. And you can route all of this sound (visually, if you use the Claudia app) to whatever processing or recording application you want. Two weeks ago, I spent 20 minutes with 3 KXStudio Laptops and a master KXStudio workstation, and got all the laptops acting as input slaves to pipe live instruments and mics to Ardour running on the workstation using Opus as the transferring codec. all it took was loading the network module into JACK, and making sure there was gigE/cat6 for networking. we had mp3's and FLAC's of the concert ready for the band to review before their roadies were done packing up the gear. As for high-end hardware, the laptops are using M-Audio Fast Track Pros and 10/10's. None of the hardware goes for more than $150, and we're using ultra-cheap AMD Fusion laptop slaves sourced from alibaba with an AMD A10-based workstation as master. We're at $2800, including 3 monitors. Because an AMD A10 with 12GB of RAM is stupid overpowered for audio production, we installed MacOS X via KVM and routed that output through JACK as well. WINE loads quite a few professional digital audio workstation packages, and a ton of VSTs, and wineasio makes them all work with JACK. Running all this emulation doesn't make the system feel sluggish at all. the main website is http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net, but the LiveCD downloadable there is based on Ubuntu 12.04. I installed raring, added the PPA's, and then installed packages. I like bleeding edge. but the official livecd is _very_ painless to install if you're having headaches configuring.

fmoralesc 13y ago
Whoa! These cadence utils are great! Bridging jack and pulseaudio has always been such a pain... Thanks for the link! In case anyone is interested: I'm using them on Arch, they are available through the AUR.

kyrias 13y ago

> It's certainly an RTFM thing, but last time I didn't know how to get PulseAudio to go away `pulseaudio -k`

cookiecaper 13y ago
PulseAudio instantly respawns from this if you have autospawn set to yes (and most distributions do, and it takes some effort to get it working without that). Typically when I want a quick-and-dirty "kill PulseAudio for real" solution I move /usr/bin/pulseaudio to /usr/bin/pulse-dead, issue pkill pulseaudio, and proceed until I want PA to come back to life, at which time I mv the binary back.
- Hello71 13y ago
  pasuspender
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    That only works as long as the command it wraps is living. I could use that approach, but typically I don't just want pulseaudio dead while gedit or something is running, I want it dead until I decide that I want it back. It usually happens this way when I'm debugging an audio issue, so it'd be annoying to have PA constantly cycling that way.
    - kyrias 13y ago
      paususpender while true do done
      - Hello71 13y ago
        pasuspender cat