Do I need to bother with Jack on Debian 12?

[blockflute]

So things, IMHO, haven't gotten easier, you were just lucky if you ask me...

Probably! I've used Debian for over 20 years now (exclusively since Sun got swallowed up by Oracle). Generally, I'm happy that it's stable and generally works, and I don't care much that many of the packages aren't super-up-to-date (neither am I). Not that it matters, but I got a bit stuck with it a couple of years ago: prior to that I was using fvwm for desktop and then for a while I had to use a machine with Plasma on it, and I liked it enough to switch to it, but the version I had got to like was newer than the one then on Deb Stable. I tried Deb Testing (Bookworm) as it had the newer Plasma version on it, but had endless trouble with Ardour - every time anything got updated, it stopped working. I got fed up with the whole issue and have been using Ubuntu Studio ever since, but that has its own drawbacks. Enter Deb 12, so I hoped the things that were problems for me would have been sorted out, and it seems that they have been.

Right now, a plain vanilla intall of Debian from the Live CD, Plasma version, with only Ardour installed on top of it, deals with all the sound issues. Sound on Firefox is working, presumably via PA, and sound with Ardour and the Behringer box works too, even at the same time. Can't be bad.

My main concern is that this really is just luck, and something will happen that stops it working, and a "proper" setup would keep going. Part of the problem is that it's hard to know what a proper setup is. Even if pipewire is not fully up to speed yet, and not even installed in the Plasma version of Debian, it probably soon will be, and I don't want to waste a lot of time sorting something out that will be superseded in a year or two. I have enough to do with coping with the also inevitable shift from X11 to Wayland - I need to rethink all my keyboard mods for a start off.

My brother and I both installed Slackware way back when it was the only distro in town - we got a set of over 100 floppies from Manchester University! He gave up several years ago and got a Mac. I don't like the Mac desktop but I do like the idea of playing an instrument in preference to struggling with Linux (I'm not paid to do that now I've retired).

Sorry to prattle on, you don't need to know most of that. The point is, everything works and if my luck holds, all is well; if not.... ?

[blockflute]

@blockflute,

you could check with dpkg

In case you don't have pipewire-jack, pipewire-alsa, and pipewire-pulse, install them. Then try starting Ardour (or any other program which depends on Jack) like this:

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wjl@handa-6:~$ PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=128/48000 pw-jack ardour

You can of course use other latency and sample rate settings, try what's best for you.

Hope that helps?
Cheers,
Wolfgang

Thanks for the suggestion - I tried dpkg and clearly pipewire is not on the system.

I'll give your suggestion re the pipewire packages a try - testing this stuff is the point of doing it on a spare laptop, doesn't matter if I mess things up and have to start again.

The only thing I would say is, wrt "any other program which depends on Jack", Ardour is currently working perfectly well without jack, and

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dpkg -l jack

returns exactly the same "no matching packages" as searching for pipe does.

[sunrat]

Code: Select all

dpkg -l jack

returns exactly the same "no matching packages" as searching for pipe does.

There is no package called jack. The jack packages are called jackd1 or jackd2. To check what is installed:

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apt list -i *jack*

"i" is for installed. To check all available, leave out the "i".

But as already said, if it's working keep it as is.

[blockflute]

There is no package called jack. The jack packages are called jackd1 or jackd2. To check what is installed:

Code: Select all

apt list -i *jack*

"i" is for installed. To check all available, leave out the "i".

Oops - silly me. jackd1-firewire, jackd1 and libjack0 are installed. Studio Controls can't find jack though. I did try installing jackd2 (since removed) and SC couldn't find it then either. There is no qjackctl currently on the system; it was added when jackd2 was installed but qjackctl couldn't find jack either.

But as already said, if it's working keep it as is.

Probably the best policy!

[Looter]

I know I'm late for a posting on this subject but I accidentally found the same thing when I started to attempt recording with Linux. I had upgraded to 12 and wanted to try recording some of my guitar stuff. I knew nothing about what I was doing. Purchased a Scarlett 2i2, plugged it and and fired up Ardour. At first there was nothing but after some snooping I found input and output setting, the Focusrite was listed, I selected them and it worked. I had no idea what to do with Ardour, still don't really but I was able to record my guitars both with a microphone and direct plug in and it played back through my headphones.

It wasn't until I wanted to try Guitarix that I had to install jack to get things to work together.