ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

beate · 2025-12-16 21:04:31

Interesting stuff,

but did You notice that ardour pulls pipewire on Excalibur (through libfluidsynth3) end even emacs nowadays does (i'm currently using mg instead, but sometimes a bit more versatility and some gui might be nice as well)?
BTW: the installed pipewire had prevented some stuff from playing audio because pipewire had made the default audio devide unavailable even when it was not running.

So today i spent some hours to clean up my notebook (initially pure alsa+quasmixer, possibly also jack).
Moreover i am setting up an XFCE based setup for my (NON-Tech) friend, and for something like that Your project will hopefully really helpful.

beate · 2025-12-16 23:36:51

Another question/suggestion: optionally integrating some kind of loudnes correction? Something like https://github.com/dpapavas/alsaloudness ?

rations · 2025-12-17 16:19:24

Thanks for the suggestion and the link, I'll have a look. I haven't tried Excalibur or Ardour. They both look good.

This is the latest branch the chat bots working on https://github.com/rations/jack-bridge/ … k-features

Incorporated the features in the qjackctl gui. Can now start and stop jack-bridge from qjackctl and use the setup feature to change sample rate, frames/period and periods/buffer. It should work the same as qjackctl does, you can change frames/period live but the others you need to press start again and reload whatever you had open.

Matlib · 2026-01-07 22:01:54

My setup:

pcm.!default {
	type plug
	slave.pcm "jack"
}
pcm.jack {
	type jack
	playback_ports {
		0 Playback:input_1
		1 Playback:input_2
	}
	capture_ports {
		0 Record:output_1
		1 Record:output_2
	}
}

jackd -m -r -d dummy

For each ALSA device I'm running:

alsa_out -j $name -d hw:$card,$dev -q1
alsa_in -j $name -d hw:$card,$dev -q1

And finally empty in/out plugin creates default input and output device:

jack_thru_client Playback
jack_thru_client Record

Matlib · 2026-01-07 22:09:53

Screenshot:

rations · 2026-01-08 11:27:34

Unreal mate, that's fantastic, great setup and that screenshot looks neat. Do you use a script so it's persistent every time you boot? The way you've set that up using Alsa channel 0,1 instead of system_playback is great and jack using dummy fantastic. And the jack_thru_client, brilliant. Does alsa in and out use much cpu?

@beate sudo apt-mark hold pipewire could help before you install. I've been trying out mate and it wanted to install pipewire when i was trying to remove pulseaudio.

Matlib · 2026-01-08 21:00:18

Thanks for turning my attention to JACK.

I forgot to mention that everything so far has been 0% dbus and 0% running as root.

I assembled all that manually from components I could find in JACK's distribution and it works almost perfectly. It needs some additional coding to make it user friendly though.

rations · Yesterday 08:39:21

If you're trying to make it user friendly, there might be something in the jack-bridge code that could help. https://github.com/rations/jack-bridge but beware it's all generated by chat bots but it might help give you some ideas. Looks like you're on a winner.

Matlib · Yesterday 09:22:46

I've used that already to figure out the configuration files. What's needed though is:

1) Code that would reconnect an app to the same output it used before. Now whenever VLC changes track it switches back to the default output.

2) Adding devices automatically.

3) Bluetooth without dbus.

greenjeans · Yesterday 14:41:17

Unreal mate, that's fantastic, great setup and that screenshot looks neat.

100% in agreement, really nice work Matlib!!

Loving it, i'm ever more convinced that pure Alsa+Jack is the way forward for complex sound set-ups, you guys are doing important work here.

Matlib · Yesterday 15:05:19

Big credit goes to @rations for discovering this. I've always been told that JACK was “unsuitable” and so on. It turns out that it is capable as a general purpose sound daemon if you don't mind memory usage.

greenjeans · Yesterday 15:35:17

Well I think you're both heroes for putting in the work to make something better.

Re: Mate; It does want to pull in Pipewire when you uninstall Pulse, on mine I let it do so, then I uninstalled Pipewire and it didn't complain or try to make me install Pulse again. But the problem I had with Mate is that it still has it's own built-in mixer, which works fine with Alsa, but does take over sound, so my EQ was a no-go as was all my volume sliders but main. Really dug in there too, I was able to remove it with some effort but doing so took out some other important functionality.

Does XFCE have it's own built-in mixer?

1) Code that would reconnect an app to the same output it used before. Now whenever VLC changes track it switches back to the default output.
2) Adding devices automatically.

There may be some code in AlsaTune that might help, I included the source code in a separate tar.xz so folks can mess with it:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do … /AlsaTune/

Last edited by greenjeans (Yesterday 15:41:32)

rations · Today 11:43:56

1) Code that would reconnect an app to the same output it used before. Now whenever VLC changes track it switches back to the default output.

I had trouble with this. jack-bridge uses jack-connection-manager.c in the src files, jack-auto-connect in contrib/usr/lib/jack-bridge and jack-route-select contrib/usr/local/lib/jack-bridge/jack-route-select. They all work together with greenjeans mxeq.c. There could be something in there that helps. Also as greenjeans suggested check out his code he actually knows what he is doing.

For bluetooth I am not sure. I got the chat bots to rebuild bluealsa without systemd. I left all that info in the repo as well.

@greengeans

I'm not sure about a mixer in xfce I only used yours when you showed me your gui. I have removed the eq part from jack-bridge now as when I try to add more features like surround sound, computer keeps saying no because everything goes through equal first.

As for heroes you're the hero mate, and modest to. I've been using vuudo mini and it's off the charts, you really know your stuff. I installed it on a laptop I bought for work 15 years ago which came with windows 7 and it was a piece of shit. I could never record anything in reaper without crackles and pops and vuudo handles recording my vsts running in wine easy. This thing has 4gb of ram and a cpu that by todays standards belongs in the bin. Seriously it does everything I need and your openbox config shits all over xfce, which I'm a huge fan of xfce. The only bug I've got is no sound when i switch to hdmi in alsatune, the screens a bit knocked around so i connect it to my tele with hdmi and use my audio interface for the sound which alsatune switches to and works.

What i installed in vuudo mini to have everything I need as an end user. Brave, reaper, yabridge, wine-staging, winetricks, libre office writer and openvpn. And the best bit, It's devuan 5. I know devuan team does a lot of work to keep up to date but bookworm is where it's at for me. Vuudo should be an offical devuan release it's awesome.

greenjeans · Today 22:48:39

@rations, bro you made my whole day and put a smile on my face that's still there, really motivated me to do some good work today, thank you!!!

I think together we are doing some great stuff on this forum in the area of sound, really looking forward to the future, once I have some stuff squared away I want to join you guys in working more with Jack, I have a lot of reading to do first though, lol, i'm still a noob pretending to be a programmer.

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#26 2025-12-16 21:04:31

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#27 2025-12-16 23:36:51

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#28 2025-12-17 16:19:24

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#29 2026-01-07 22:01:54

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#30 2026-01-07 22:09:53

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#31 2026-01-08 11:27:34

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#32 2026-01-08 21:00:18

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#33 Yesterday 08:39:21

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#34 Yesterday 09:22:46

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#35 Yesterday 14:41:17

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#36 Yesterday 15:05:19

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#37 Yesterday 15:35:17

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#38 Today 11:43:56

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

#39 Today 22:48:39

Re: ALSA+Jack system wide audio No pulseaudio or pipewire

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