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jack-transport & hardware/software sync

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:43 pm
by Jiyunatori
Hey people.

I recently acquired a soundcard (FA-66 to be precise) that allows me to finally MIDI-connect my Korg Electribe SX to my laptop. Now I would like to get the Electribe as the sync master for everything.

There seems to be this jack-transport thing, but I'm not so sure ... please tell me if I'm wrong. Jack-transport was the first MIDI part to be implemented in jack. It's goal is to offer a way to share sync data between programs. Here, sync data are more than tempo, it is also play/pause/stop/forward/backward etc, all of this coming from the world of video editing softwares. A software is declared as the "jack-transport master", sending sync data to jack-transport, and the others are quietly listening and obeying, thus staying in sync.

But now, jack-midi is much more than that - it has turned to a full-fledged patchbay to route MIDI events like it is done with audio.

This is where I get lost. Does the two things coexist ? From what I saw, many apps are still using ALSA for handling MIDI ports, rather than jack-midi. The MIDI ports of my soundcard are appearing in jack-midi. Can I declare MIDI IN as the jack-transport master, in order to have my electribe controling everything ?

~ tori

Re: jack-transport & hardware/software sync

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2009 11:29 pm
by thorgal
I don't know much about MIDI, but I think that the jack transport cannot be controlled via MIDI because of the MIDI clock which is unreliable (I may be wrong though). I think I saw something like that in the ardour forum but it's rather vague in my memory. There are control surfaces that can pilot ardour, which can use the jack transport and thus be controlled by the control surface device. But a keyboard ? I don't think so.

Re: jack-transport & hardware/software sync

Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 10:16 am
by becks
Jiyunatori wrote:Hey people.

I recently acquired a soundcard (FA-66 to be precise) that allows me to finally MIDI-connect my Korg Electribe SX to my laptop. Now I would like to get the Electribe as the sync master for everything.
take a look here:
http://jackctlmmc.sourceforge.net/
( but i don't know if esx support mmc)
HTH

Re: jack-transport & hardware/software sync

Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2009 9:38 am
by Jiyunatori
Wicked, becks ! thanks for the info, I'll check this out this weekend.