THIS IS A COMPLAINT … A SERIOUS ONE TOO SO YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION.
PLATFORM: Linux Mint 18.x (Sarah)
Ardour versions prior to 4, maybe 3 too PLAYED NICELY WITH JACK AND OTHER APPLICATIONS THAT USED IT.
Ardour versions 4 and 5 DO NOT PLAY NICE WITH THE OTHER KIDS USING JACK.
Because Ardour demands exclusive, and apparently non-standard use of JACK, any other applications that might use jack are effectively locked out. Absolutely NOTHING else can use jack while ardour has control. That is totally unacceptable. Do you hear me? Unacceptable.
Since the older versions that DID play nice with jack are no longer available there is no alternative but to dump ardour and start looking elsewhere.
I’m pretty sure you (the developer) could make this work if you wanted to. It appears to be the case that you don’t - for what ever reason. It’s frustrating, really. I’m pretty sure you know what you’ve done and why. I don’t think it’s going to work out like you planned. I could be mistaken but I don’t think so.
Please… fix this problem or throw in the towel. I certainly have.
Have you set Ardour to use JACK? If you had it set to use ALSA instead (not possible on earlier versions of Ardour) your audio interface would be unavailable for other applications using JACK.
Ardour has not changed its use of JACK. Most bugs related to JACK are caused by the distribution, and are thus not possible for us to fix. What you are describing is absolutely not what most of our users experience, and it is sad to think that you believe we would not have fixed “this issue” if it was actually something inherent to Ardour. Every day, many people are using Ardour 5.x with JACK and other applications. It works. I believe that it does not work for you, but I am confused why you think it is our fault.
The general tone of your comment leaves me (and I imagine many others who might be willing to try to help you) somewhat unwilling to try to help. We are a tiny software project and we work extremely hard to make sure that Ardour works as well as possible, as widely as possible. Writing about a problem in this way, without even bothering to inquire if this is a general problem, one specific to your system, or specific to Linux Mint 18.x, does nothing to make me want to get things fixed for you, even though I am sure that the fix is relatively simple and straightforward. Here’s an alternative wording that doesn’t have that effect:
Hi. Ever since I upgraded to Ardour 5.x, I’ve been unable to use JACK with other applications at the same time as Ardour. I’m using Ardour on Linux Mint 18.x. Does anyone else have this problem? Any clues on how to fix it or what might be wrong?"
There is no “company” behind Ardour, with hidden engineers and frontline support staff. Just a handful of actual human beings who believe passionately in the project, and do our best to make it as good as we possibly can.
Having read this and your other blog post I applaud you for not instantly deleting accounts like these, not even a pretense of politeness! You really have to instruct people how to politely ask for help these days !?
Since it stopped working in Ardour 4 my guess is that Mr ufoauthor is running it with the ALSA backend.
If so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t play well with Jack programs.
Mr ufoauthor, please verify that you are using the Jack backend and not the ALSA one.