JACK - connecting a world of audio

JACK 1.9.5 released

letz — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:38:56 -0800

Continuing the JACK2 serie.

- Dynamic choice of maximum port number.
- More robust sample rate change handling code in JackCoreAudioDriver.
- Devin Anderson patch for Jack FFADO driver issues with lost MIDI bytes between periods (and more).
- Fix port_rename callback : now both old name and new name are given as parameters.
- Special code in JackCoreAudio driver to handle completely buggy Digidesign CoreAudio user-land driver.
- Ensure that client-side message buffer thread calls thread_init callback if/when it is set by the client (backport of JACK1 rev 3838).
- Check dynamic port-max value. Fix JackCoreMidiDriver::ReadProcAux when ring buffer is full (thanks Devin Anderson).

JACK 1.9.4 released

letz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:30:51 -0800

Continuing the JACK2 serie: Jack 1.9.4 is API synched with JACK 0.118.0. Fix a lot of more or less important bugs, especially on OSX with much better support off CoreAudio devices (input/output devices "internally" aggregated, hog mode...etc...).

- Solaris boomer backend now working in capture or playback only mode.
- Add a -G parameter in CoreAudio backend (the computation value in RT thread expressed as percent of period).
- Use SNDCTL_DSP_SYNCGROUP/SNDCTL_DSP_SYNCSTART API to synchronize input and output in Solaris boomer backend.
- Big endian bug fix in memops.c.
- Fix issues in JackNetDriver::DecodeTransportData and JackNetDriver::Initialize.

JACK 0.118.0 released

paul — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:36:39 -0800

Due to a very shortsighted error on my part, we are re-releasing JACK today with a very minor change to ensure continuing compatibility between JACK 1 and JACK 2. The new release 0.118.0 differs from 0.117.0 by replacing the newly added -L command line switch (--no-realtime) with -r, since -L was already in use in JACK 2. There were also two minor code cleanups that do not affect functionality. LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS: PLEASE DO NOT RELEASE 0.117.0 - we want QJackctl and other similar tools to have a single command line argument set

JACK 0.117.0 released

paul — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:25:49 -0800

JACK 0.117.0 has been released and is available here. There is one API addition, some significant implementation improvements in netjack1, and some important command line changes which will affect all JACK GUI control applications (such as qjackctl). Thanks to Torben Hohn for his continuing work on netjack1 and Florian Faber for the new sanity checking tests. Please report issues to the JACK mailing list.

jackd now runs in realtime mode by default. the use of -R is no longer necessary. Use -L to run in non-realtime-scheduling.
if you build JACK from source, the configure step will halt if you appear to be trying to install JACK in parallel with an existing version
new run-time sanity checks. These are platform dependent, but on Linux JACK will check:
- user can run with realtime priority (if JACK is going to run with RT scheduling)
- memory locking is allowed and not unlimited
- if using the TSC as a clock source, check that CPU frequency scaling is disabled
If any of them are not satisfactory, jackd will print appropriate information
to the screen, and exit with an error status. Use --no-sanity-checks or -N to disable
these tests. There is likely
some room for improvement in the heuristics they use, and possibly adding further runtime
testing to ensure that JACK is likely to run correctly for the user.
internal design of the alsa_io utilities revised, with substantial improvements. These clients
can be configured with the same settings as you could use with jackd itself (e.g. -dhw:0 -p128 -n2),
which previously would not have been stable. Also, the resampling quality (via libsamplerate) is
now configurable if you need/wish to reduce CPU usage. See their respective man pages for details.
netjack1 improvements:
- driver command line options are more consistent with other backends and with jack_netsource,
  They are also documented on the man pages for the net backend and jack_netsource.
- make it all work even better (you probably don't care about the details)
- some options which allow the netjackconnect script to pierce a
  firewall and tell netjack which ports to use.
- support for CELT 0.7.0 (note that CELT is subject to fairly
  frequent updates and if you use this for a WAN connection,
  both ends must be using the same version of CELT - it does
  not provide for any version detection or back-compatibility).
- CELT bandwidth is now configured in Kbits per second, instead of bytes per
  period, which made the quality and bandwidth depend on periodsize.
- the client name of jack_netsource is now "netjack"
New JACK API function: jack_on_info_shutdown(). This is very similar to the existing jack_on_shutdown(), but if used, JACK will deliver some information about the reason for the shutdown to the client. This reflects our realization that, particularly on OS X, there are reasons why JACK might shut down that have nothing to do with client behaviour (e.g. an audio interface is unplugged or taken over by another application with new settings). See the documentation for more details.

Torben is working on web-based system for setting up WAN netjack connectivity. More news will follow on this front.

JACK 1.9.3 released

letz — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:45:24 -0700

Future JACK2 will be based on C++ jackdmp code base. Jack 1.9.3 is the "renaming" of jackdmp and the result of a lot of developments started after LAC 2008.

What is new:

- New JackBoomerDriver class for Boomer driver on Solaris.
- Add mixed 32/64 bits mode (off by default).
- Native MIDI backend (JackCoreMidiDriver, JackWinMMEDriver).
- In ALSA audio card reservation code, tries to open the card even if reservation fails.
- Clock source setting on Linux.
- Add jackctl_server_switch_master API.
- Fix transport callback (timebase master, sync) issue when used after jack_activate (RT thread was not running).

JACK 1.9.2 released

letz — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:49:44 -0700

Future JACK2 will be based on C++ jackdmp code base. Jack 1.9.2 is the "renaming" of jackdmp and the result of a lot of developments started after LAC 2008.

What is new:

- Solaris version with a new OSS backend (Yes We Can !!)
- New "profiling" tools, allowing to better understand/measure the temporal behaviour of the system.
- Rework the mutex/signal classes.
- Support for BIG_ENDIAN machines in NetJack2.
- D-BUS based device reservation to better coexist with PulseAudio on Linux.
- Add auto-connect parameter in netmanager and netadapter.
- Use Torben Hohn PI controler code for adapters.

JACK 1.9.1 released

letz — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:11:07 -0800

Future JACK2 will be based on C++ jackdmp code base. Jack 1.9.1 is the "renaming" of jackdmp and the result of a lot of developments started after LAC 2008.

What is new:

- A lot of improvements and bug fixes in NetJack2, that is now working more reliably.
- Synchronize the JACK2 codebase with recent changes in JACK1 API (in particular some thread related functions as well as ALSA backend, ring buffer code...)
- A lot of small bug fixes and improvements everywhere.

JACK 0.116.2 released (32/64 JACK MIDI bugfix)

paul — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:55:11 -0800

This release features fixes to make JACK MIDI work between mixed 32bit and 64bit JACK server and clients. This functionality was omitted from previous 32/64 bit work. There are also some minor improvements in netjack. If you are not using JACK MIDI in a mixed 32/64 environment, you probably do not need to upgrade, but no other areas of JACK have been altered, so an upgrade will not change existing behaviour. Thanks to Torben Hohn for his work on this release.

JACK 0.116.1 released (netjack bugfix)

paul — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:54:18 -0800

JACK 0.116.1 is now released. It contains a critical bugfix for the netjack driver discovered last night. There are no other changes between this and 0.116.0. Apologies to any distribution packagers who jumped on the 0.116.0 release (but thanks also for your attention).

JACK 0.116.0 released

paul — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:13:09 -0800

On behalf of the JACK development community, I am happy to announce the release of JACK 0.116.0. This is an important release, because it fixes all the problems reported with 0.115.6 and now makes 0.109.2 completely obsolete. Nobody should be using 0.109.2 within a few weeks, and even that is only to allow for distributions to update.

As usual, upgrading to this new version does not require clients to be rebuilt or relinked. Packagers should note that there really are manpages for most of the "tools" clients now (unlike the claim in 0.115.6). These manpages will improve as we get closer to 1.0, as will netjack which remains a hotbed of development activity thanks to Torben.

Changes since 0.115.6

(in rough order of importance)

compile on OS X
fixed deadlock in jack when handling multiple vanishing clients
netjack now supports CELT codec to allow use over DSL/WAN
many fixes and redesign for netjack code
add missing changes for mixed 32/64-bit server/client support
make dynamic SIMD work on OS X
man pages for most toolkit clients
transport control client added to toolkit clients
build system notably cleaned up and stabilized