Re: [Jack-Devel] Using Jack

Hi John, thank you very much for your input, 

 

It might well be possible for you to use Jack - but there's nothing in your
emails to support the notion that your app needed to be a Jack server.  

This is really confusing. As far as my understanding goes, a server is need
to interact with jack audio/midi channels. The only thing I'm concerned
about is to start a Jack server with Midi support right now. Nothing more,
nothing less. But this mechanic is only supported with qjackctl.exe and
command lines. What I'm after is to skip the step of launching qjackctl.exe
to have Jack functionalities in my app.

If it used Jack at all, it could simply be a Jack client. 

Well, I'll like confirmation on this because when opening a client with
jack_client_open, jack will automatically start a server if none are
available. right? The bottleneck is here. There is no way to tell how we
would like the server to behave by jack_client_open. Like hey Jack, fine
there is no sever available, start one but enable midi support. Is this a
legitimate approach or am I taking crazy pills? 

IIRC your argument for making it a Jack server was that you didn't want your
customers to have to install Jack.  In that case, do what we do...  our
Mixbus installer installs a "minimal" version of Jack - essentially just the
server, without QJackCtl and all the other non-essential stuff.  

Very well, I'll try that, how can I get my hands on the mini Jack?

But your proposal (cobbling together a proprietary server that would
effectively break other Jack apps) is really NOT acceptable and I doubt if
anyone will support you with that.  Mixbus is a hugely complex project and
yet we can manage just fine as a Jack client

I have no interest in braking other Jack apps on purpose. I simply want my
app to start the server automatically and determine how it is configured.
Just let my app manage Jack's server options before it starts.

I'll look at the other libraries but I'd like to give Jack a real chance. 

 

From: [hidden]
[mailto:[hidden]] On Behalf Of John Emmas
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 3:49 AM
Cc: 'JACK'
Subject: Re: [Jack-Devel] Using Jack

 

On 19/03/2014 22:42, Yves Perron wrote:

 

A far as I can tell, Jack supports client/server network architecture and
can process in and out midi/audio data. It seemed like a match to me. What
do you think?

Hi Yves,

It might well be possible for you to use Jack - but there's nothing in your
emails to support the notion that your app needed to be a Jack server.  If
it used Jack at all, it could simply be a Jack client.  IIRC your argument
for making it a Jack server was that you didn't want your customers to have
to install Jack.  In that case, do what we do...  our Mixbus installer
installs a "minimal" version of Jack - essentially just the server, without
QJackCtl and all the other non-essential stuff.  But your proposal (cobbling
together a proprietary server that would effectively break other Jack apps)
is really NOT acceptable and I doubt if anyone will support you with that.
Mixbus is a hugely complex project and yet we can manage just fine as a Jack
client.

 

Any other option comes to mind?

 

I don't have any actual experience with it but I've heard of something
called portmidi:-

http://portmedia.sourceforge.net/portmidi/

You'd need to contact the developers to find out if it's still an active
project.  Two other products (which don't support midi AFAIK but might be
able to help) are portaudio:-

http://www.portaudio.com/

and libsndfile:-

http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfile/

Like I said, I don't think either of them supports midi directly but they've
probably been asked about it many times - so there's a good chance they'll
be able to suggest something suitable.  Good luck.

John

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