Ubuntu – Playing a MIDI keyboard without JACK / how to use JACK and PulseAudio/ALSA

alsajackmidipulseaudiosound

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 use aconnect to connect the keyboard to the synth.)