[pulseaudio-discuss] Working with PA and jack

[Patrick Shirkey]

Hi,

After some discussion on the LAU lists over the past couple of years it would appear their is a usability issue that is giving PA a bad reputation as a pita.

I believe it boils down to this previously posted problem.

https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2008-November/002603.html

I would like to get some feedback on why exactly PA is not currently able to autoreconfigure itself to play nicely with jack out of the box.

Currently I am forced to use a seperate config file for running jack and also have been suggested to use pasuspender before runing jackd.

I have seen that many people use pasuspender to completely disable PA but I would like to get PA to automatically give up control of the audio device and connect to jack if jack is run and then if jack is stopped to regain control of the audio device.

I think this would make a big difference for a lot of professional audio users and would go a long way to making pulse audio a more user friendly tool. 

It would seem that with pasuspender the solution is very close. In fact it looks like "pasuspender -s jack" might work except that for me it doesn't. I haven't found any details online for using pasuspender -s option and the man page doesn't supply any useful details.

Now, just to be clear, I have been working with Linux Audio for over 10 years and am quite capable of running a system without PA. However I have undertaken this project as I am tired of hearing people bash PA without actually looking at the core problem. Also I would like to point out that if I am having a problem with this process then desktop users who are the reason for PA's existance must really be struggling. 

I would like to see this issue resolved quickly if possible as it will alleviate a huge negative feedback issue that is IMO opinion affecting the whole of the Linux Desktop experience. Afterall most people use the desktop for multimedia and PA is a conerstone of the platform.

Using PA and jack together should be a seamless experience with PA ceding gracefully to jack when it is started.



Cheers.


-- 

Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd