So, I havea MIDI keyboard but I'm not really motivated to play when I have to set up JACK and everything else just to get one sound out of it. The problem is that whenever I start JACK I can't play sounds from YouTube, Move Player, RhythmBox, etc. because JACK is taking over the soundcard.
Here's how I start JACK and my MIDI keyboard:
$ pulseaudio --kill
$ jackd & qjackctl & amsynth
(plug in keyboard)
So, apparently JACK needs the PulseAudio soundcard. But here's how I exit JACK:
$ alsa force-reload
I've tried pulseaudio –start but this seems to be the only thing that works. So I'm not really sure whether it's pulseaudio or alsa that I need to play rhythmbox/youtube/etc.
So, my question is: Is there any way I can play my MIDI keyboard either without JACK or finding a way I can use JACK and still play RhythmBox etc.? Or maybe a non-JACK MIDI controller? I've tried
$ jackd -d alsa
and that doesn't really do anything…I still can't hear non-JACK audio…I don't really know what that's supposed to do either, I admit.
I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 on an Acer AO722 with an Alesis QX49.
Best Answer
To let Jack and PulseAudio work together better, you should use pasuspender.
With the options
-m alsa -a alsa
,amsynth
should not use Jack. (You can the useaconnect
to connect the keyboard to the synth.)