JACK Audio in Arch Linux

VCV Rack
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So maybe this is old news to everyone else, but in case anyone is scratching their heads like I was until a moment ago:

Connecting VCVRack to JACK has to be done by hand. Selecting the Audio Output Device in the Audio module just creates the ‘RtApiJACK’ client, At least for me, all I had to do then was patch that client to System outs using a patchbay GUI. I use Catia because it comes with Cadence, which makes setting up JACK, ALSA, and PulseAudio relatively pain-free.

At least so far.

I gleaned this information from a github thread on supporting JACK in official builds. One reason I am posting this is to weigh in as yet another JACK user who would have found it more intuitive had VCVRack connected to JACK automagically, like SunVox does, say, or Borderlands.

Additional bonus: connecting to JACK eliminates the horrible pops and clicks I was getting trying to just use ALSA by itself. Yay! Now I can make things!

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you can use a LADISH to save your jack session and avoid reconnect manually every time that you start jack. Claudia is my favorite option just make your connections, save the session and in the next time, open qjackctl , claudia, open your claudia session and now when you open your VCV rack and other software they will be connected magically.

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Ah yes. Good idea. I haven’t needed a session manager yet because I’m still just beginning to piece together this Arch laptop as a multimedia workstation. But i figured the time would come. I’ll take a look at Claudia

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  • Ladish/Lash are somewhat dead (websites are literally dead, in some cases.)
  • NSM (Non Session Manager) seems to be sticking around, and there were some pushes in various circles to get applications to support them.
  • JACK Sessions are extremely easy to support but almost nobody does so; i’m not sure why.

I suppose one of the reasons NSM is winning out is because it’s “just” sitting on top of OSC. Supporting NSM is doing the same ground work to support a lot of programmable interfaces which makes it doubly valuable. Supporting JACK sessions is tying things to the audio server. Or maybe just nobody has been interested in the politics of getting patches accepted shrug

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