Start JACK without X

Post fully complete "how to" guides and tutorials here. This is a great place to get feedback on stuff you might put in the wiki.

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
f00bar
Established Member
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 12, 2013 7:40 pm

Start JACK without X

Post by f00bar »

Is it possible to start jack without X? If so, how?

I have an old PII Deschutes 256 MB ram with an old PCI soundcard TurtleBeach Montego (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_Bea ... stream.jpg) which has some nice sounds. Currently I [em]can[/em] play on that synthesizer without too long latency through a background process that receives MIDI channel message from the network and passes the to the soundcard. Audio is fed back by an analog cable. I want to replace the current OS on that machine (Windows 4.1.2222 A) with some Linux distro to make the system more reliable. On top of the Linux distro, I want to run JACK and a JACK client that replaces the current background process. Ideally, I would like to feed audio back through network also.

Anyway, it seams like need X somehow, and the machine does not have any display, so I do not need X but SSH.
User avatar
raboof
Established Member
Posts: 1855
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:58 am
Location: Deventer, NL
Has thanked: 50 times
Been thanked: 74 times
Contact:

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by raboof »

f00bar wrote:Is it possible to start jack without X? If so, how?
It won't be as convenient, but you can manually start jackd from the commandline: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/luc ... ckd.1.html

I wonder though if it'd be possible to write a script that captures the sounds in that card and makes a soundfont out of that - or does it do any fancy things that aren't so easy to capture?
f00bar
Established Member
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 12, 2013 7:40 pm

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by f00bar »

raboof wrote:
f00bar wrote:Is it possible to start jack without X? If so, how?

It won't be as convenient, but you can manually start jackd from the commandline: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/luc ... ckd.1.html
I start jackd that way. But if X is not running, it fails to start. You can verify this by logging out from your graphical session and then log in VT1 (CTRL-ALT-F1). Trying to launch jack

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/jackd --sync -P80 -p128 -dalsa -dhw:UA25 -r48000 -p64 -n3 -Xraw &
fails because DISPLAY is not set
raboof wrote: I wonder though if it'd be possible to write a script that captures the sounds in that card and makes a soundfont out of that - or does it do any fancy things that aren't so easy to capture?
It has a strange "Halo Pad" sounds like some noisy waveform fed through a highly resonant filter modulated by an LFO. It is a wavetable synth.
f00bar
Established Member
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 12, 2013 7:40 pm

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by f00bar »

falkTX wrote:if you try to start jackd on a build that uses jackd + jackdbus (the most common), you'll need a trick to make it work:

Code: Select all

export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/dbus/system_bus_socket
Can I install the most common build without X.
f00bar
Established Member
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 12, 2013 7:40 pm

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by f00bar »

falkTX wrote:you mean this?

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install jackd2
Yes, but will tell me that I need dbus and a bunch of other things not related to audio at all?
User avatar
raboof
Established Member
Posts: 1855
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:58 am
Location: Deventer, NL
Has thanked: 50 times
Been thanked: 74 times
Contact:

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by raboof »

f00bar wrote:
falkTX wrote:you mean this?

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install jackd2
Yes, but will tell me that I need dbus and a bunch of other things not related to audio at all?
You could also choose to use jackd1 rather than jackd2 - AFAIK that doesn't have that dbus dependency, and if I'm not mistaken both are still actively maintained.
asbak
Established Member
Posts: 897
Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:04 pm
Has thanked: 71 times
Been thanked: 64 times

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by asbak »

Somewhat related question, is there a way to manually override jackdbus from ever loading? I saw it mentioned somewhere that one could compile jackd2 without DBUS support but assuming I just want to use vanilla jackd2 from KXStudio's repository, is it possible to de-activate jackdbus somehow, apart from manually killing the process?
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
varpa
Established Member
Posts: 509
Joined: Fri Feb 25, 2011 6:40 pm
Been thanked: 13 times

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by varpa »

As far as I can tell there is no problem stopping jack from running with jackdbus with "jack_control stop" and then starting jackd yourself. My current version of using kxstudio is to have cadence (=jackdus) run by default using my built-in (laptop) audio card. When I plug in my firewire interface I start qjackctl via a script which first stops jackdbus (jack_control stop) and then starts up jack. I use this method because my script automatically detects the firewire card and starts qjackctl with my firewire preset.
f00bar
Established Member
Posts: 83
Joined: Sun May 12, 2013 7:40 pm

Re: Start JACK without X

Post by f00bar »

I have found out that by using

ssh -Y user@machine

I get the X display locally. That is fine.
Post Reply