In article 20130215203017.02b60dda@debian, Folderol
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:56 +0000 (GMT) Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Jim Price
wrote:
On 14/02/13 22:56, Davey wrote:

Indeed. I have no idea what Jack is, but it is there, in
/usr/lib64. But what happens otherwise if I remove it?


Jack is handy for music production, as you can often use some of the
features of your sound card which might not be supported by ALSA
alone.

I continue to wonder about that. I haven't ever use 'Jack'. Never
needed it, despite recording things as well as playing and processing
them. But my impression is that it has been developed as a 'user
friendly' sic way to do things which its creators *think* people
"can't do" with ALSA.

Jack allows you to look at audio links in a totally different way. It
uses ALSA to make the physical connections, but (using something like
Qjackctl) presents all the information in a sane manner.

In effect, that's a part of my point. Jack is effectively acting as a
'human interface' to ALSA. People use it because they can make sense of how
to use Jack, but are baffled by how to get ALSA directly to achieve the
same specific task.

If Jack (or indeed Pulse, etc) work for you or anyone else, that's fine
with me. Matter of personal preference and convenience. However my feeling
is that we have got into this situation of having 'many different sound
systems' due to a lack of awareness of how to simply use ALSA. That, in
turn, is because it can be a real PITA to work out how to get ALSA set up
in the way a specific task requires.

I've managed by banging rocks together for a few years to sort out the
basics of just getting music to play or record using ALSA. I've still not
sussed out the more complex requirements. So I can quite understand why
people use Jack, etc.

The problem in my experience, though, is that sometimes systems like Pulse
actually cause problems because they 'nanny' the user and actually stop
them getting what they want. Once that happens I feel the user can easily
end up in the kind of situation familiar to some Windows/Mac users: Of the
system refusing to do what is wanted, and behaviing in an opaque manner
which resists the user's attempts to correct its incorrect behaviour.

For the sake of my own sanity I gave up fighting Pulse years ago. I just
bypass it. But I just need to play or record/capture one stream at a time.
If I were trying to do multichannel recordings, mixdowns, etc, I'd probably
do something else.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html