Anybody use JACK OSX or Plogue Bidule?

mattfort · Post by **mattfort** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 5:50 am

I need a way to "rewire" standalone VI's that don't have re-wire capability so I can maximise RAM usage. Any thoughts> I heard these might help....

Gibble · Post by **Gibble** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 6:07 am

I've used Jack OSX with Ardour (beta) and have found that it seems capable of connecting just about anything to anything. From what I've seen, if an item has an audio output and/or input then it will appear in the Jack interface which will allow you to plug virtual wires between any of the units.

As to Jack working with VI's I was able to connect a demo verison of Arturia's Moog synth to Ardour using Jack.

Although I've not tried Jack with DP my guru friend has said that the principles are the same therefore DP and Jack should work together.

Gibble

chamelion · Post by **chamelion** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 4:47 pm

I've been trying to find a way to link Garageband to DP so that I can use GB's software instruments from within DP. Some people suggested using Soundflower to handle the connection. I set it up, and managed to get everything working, except that the sound of the instruments was degraded by a series of clicks that were recorded along with the original sound. A Soundflower tutorial on the process said that if there were audible clicks, to reduce the buffer sizes of GB and DP. I did this, but the clicks were still to loud to be viable.

I searched for an alternative to Soundflower and discovered Jack. I repeated the process and found Jack to be stable, efficient, and clean as a whistle. So for my money, Jack OSX would always be my weapon of choice for connecting anything to anything.

Cheers,

Geoff

jstaczek · Post by **jstaczek** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 9:47 pm

I've used Bidule with success. It's a great alternative to a V-Rack if you work like I do and keep one cue per DP file. I was running it on a dual G5 side-by-side with DP but have since started running it on a 2nd machine (Macbook Pro) and lightpiping it in.

I'm done running VIs on the DP machine. DP is much faster, much more responsive and much more stable with VIs running on another box.

zaster · Post by **zaster** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:08 pm

I am today trying to use Bidule myself as a rewire intermediary, but while I can send my MIDI tracks to bidules MIDI port ins, I can't get the Aux input drop down menus to recognize it as a rewire slave. When I try to open Bidule (after DP), while it's launching it says "another rewire mixer is in use". After it opens, like I say, I can choose the Bidule MIDI outputs on my MIDI tracks (and if I had some set up before Bidule launched, the output names become solid instead of italicized, telling me DP recognizes that Bidule is now viable). But I can't see it as audio inputs either on aux or audio tracks so that I can return a VST. Any ideas?

bug67 · Post by **bug67** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 10:27 am

chamelion wrote:I've been trying to find a way to link Garageband to DP so that I can use GB's software instruments from within DP. Some people suggested using Soundflower to handle the connection. I set it up, and managed to get everything working, except that the sound of the instruments was degraded by a series of clicks that were recorded along with the original sound. A Soundflower tutorial on the process said that if there were audible clicks, to reduce the buffer sizes of GB and DP. I did this, but the clicks were still to loud to be viable.

I searched for an alternative to Soundflower and discovered Jack. I repeated the process and found Jack to be stable, efficient, and clean as a whistle. So for my money, Jack OSX would always be my weapon of choice for connecting anything to anything.

Cheers,

Geoff

Hey,

Thanks for the tip on Jack OSX. I was having the exact problem as you with Soundflower. With Jack OSX all I did was download and install. Absolutely zero configuration!

Works perfectly. Thanks

EDIT Ok. Not zero config. There are some routing things I need to learn. I could hear GB's VIs right away but they were coming out of my system monitors not my 828mkII monitors. Like I said, I need to figure out the routing. I'll get to it eventually.

richardein · Post by **richardein** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 4:52 am

Does Jack OSX and Bidule permit sync to an external word clock?

That is, can you have a Big Ben clocking three or four computers with audio i/o and, on the main computer clock Jack/Bidule and the main interface's audio outputs?

Hope that's clear...

richardein · Post by **richardein** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 1:39 am

I played around with Jack yesterday. A few thoughts:

1. It is much more flexible than Soundflower and, apparently, allows more than Soundflower's 16 tracks (I haven't tried that yet).

2. It was, at least for me, far harder to set up. The visual interfeace is not that intuitve. But I did finally grok it, sort of.

3. Unlike Soundflower, it is not set and forget. You must open JackPilot and then turn on the Jack server. Okay, fair enough, a quickey can handle that. Unfortunately, you then must load a configuration file (or set it up by hand) and, worse, you cannot load the config file until you open a routing window (another quickey). But what's really even worse to the point of downright annoying is that you cannot load the config file until all the clients (ie, the programs you want to use Jack in) are loaded.

I'm sure that an elaborate enough quickey sequence could macro all this up, but that is an awful lot of programming to do, and comes with its own set of gotchas. (BTW, the autostart applescript that comes with Jack doesn't work on my system and, since it was saved as an app, cannot be edited.)

4. This means, of course, that if a Jack'd program crashes, not only must you reload the program, but you must reload the configuration file as well. One more step that's easy to forget and lead to confusion when you - or an assistant - don't hear sound.

5. The good news is that Jack seems to be much less click-prone than Soundflower on my system, which is externally clocked. I've set it up inside DP with a pci 24 interface rather than as an aggregate device . And it seems to work extremely well. I've set up Kontakt 2 outside DP as a stand-alone and jack'd the outputs into DP5 12. Works perfectly.

6. One more nasty quirk. You set the hardware buffer in JackPilot, not in dp5 thru the hardware configuration menu. In fact you can't change it any longer inside DP5 or Kontakt. And that means that you must exit all Jack'd programs (or risk crashing them), shutting down Jack, changing the Jack preferences, then turning Jack back on, opening up your programs again, and then load the config file. With a lot of samples and a lot of programs, this could take a while.

7. Based on preliminary tests, I think I can get away with a buffer of 128 on a dual 2.7 gig G5.

Bottom line: Since I need the virtual audio tracks, I need either Soundflower or Jack. Jack sounds the best, at least so far. It is cumbersome to use, but it works. Obviously, this or similar rewire-like technology should be incorporated directly into DP and VI's as a matter of course but until it is, Jack does work.

blue · Post by **blue** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 2:36 am

richardein wrote:Obviously, this or similar rewire-like technology should be incorporated directly into DP and VI's as a matter of course but until it is, Jack does work.

What annoys me is why this isn't available at the OS level. You can pipe MIDI between apps (and even networks) without any 3rd party utilities. Why not audio? My guess is it may have something to do with DRM tunes. Perhaps if the industry moves away from DRM across the board, you will be able to shuttle audio between apps using nothing but core audio.

Eleventh Hour Sound · Post by **Eleventh Hour Sound** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 9:28 pm

Glad you got it working. When I tried Jack a couple years ago I kept getting some strange audio glitch and then DP would freeze. Do you select Jack as the hardware driver for DP? If you or someone has a step by step Jack setup method for DP I would appreciate it.

I wish MOTU would come out of denial and realize that people need more options for running low latency VI's along with DP.

They always mention the huge track counts you can get, but in the real world when you're trying to record in real time with BFD, Ivory, MSI or Philharmonik and more... things come grinding to a hault.

richardein wrote:I played around with Jack yesterday. A few thoughts:

1. It is much more flexible than Soundflower and, apparently, allows more than Soundflower's 16 tracks (I haven't tried that yet).

2. It was, at least for me, far harder to set up. The visual interfeace is not that intuitve. But I did finally grok it, sort of.

3. Unlike Soundflower, it is not set and forget. You must open JackPilot and then turn on the Jack server. Okay, fair enough, a quickey can handle that. Unfortunately, you then must load a configuration file (or set it up by hand) and, worse, you cannot load the config file until you open a routing window (another quickey). But what's really even worse to the point of downright annoying is that you cannot load the config file until all the clients (ie, the programs you want to use Jack in) are loaded.

I'm sure that an elaborate enough quickey sequence could macro all this up, but that is an awful lot of programming to do, and comes with its own set of gotchas. (BTW, the autostart applescript that comes with Jack doesn't work on my system and, since it was saved as an app, cannot be edited.)

4. This means, of course, that if a Jack'd program crashes, not only must you reload the program, but you must reload the configuration file as well. One more step that's easy to forget and lead to confusion when you - or an assistant - don't hear sound.

5. The good news is that Jack seems to be much less click-prone than Soundflower on my system, which is externally clocked. I've set it up inside DP with a pci 24 interface rather than as an aggregate device . And it seems to work extremely well. I've set up Kontakt 2 outside DP as a stand-alone and jack'd the outputs into DP5 12. Works perfectly.

6. One more nasty quirk. You set the hardware buffer in JackPilot, not in dp5 thru the hardware configuration menu. In fact you can't change it any longer inside DP5 or Kontakt. And that means that you must exit all Jack'd programs (or risk crashing them), shutting down Jack, changing the Jack preferences, then turning Jack back on, opening up your programs again, and then load the config file. With a lot of samples and a lot of programs, this could take a while.

7. Based on preliminary tests, I think I can get away with a buffer of 128 on a dual 2.7 gig G5.

Bottom line: Since I need the virtual audio tracks, I need either Soundflower or Jack. Jack sounds the best, at least so far. It is cumbersome to use, but it works. Obviously, this or similar rewire-like technology should be incorporated directly into DP and VI's as a matter of course but until it is, Jack does work.

richardein · Post by **richardein** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 11:53 am

"Do you select Jack as the hardware driver for DP? If you or someone has a step by step Jack setup method for DP I would appreciate it. "

Okay, here's what you do. This is for Kontakt and DP 5 because that is what I use. Also I'm not in my studio but I think I remember it pretty well.

As always, run disk utility and make sure your disk(s) is (are) fine.

Download the latest JackOsX and install it.

Boot up JackPilot and set the preferences for your hardware and for how many Jack outputs you want. As mentioned, you set the buffer here, not in DP. 128 works, 256 is better on my system (dual 2.7 g5 max ram).

Start Jack.

Open DP 5. In hardware config, select both your hardware and Jack Routing. I also chose medium work priority and put the Host Buffer mulitplier to 2. (Reading things in this forum suggested that when running two interfaces in DP, this is the thing to do. Haven't tested it to confirm that it's necessary, but it does seem to work).

Open Kontakt outside of DP. Open their own audio/MIDI setup and in audio choose the Jack outputs option. (You also need to set up an interapplication MIDI connection in DP, but I assume you know how to do that. It's explained in the DP manual). In the outputs pane, click on config and assign Jack outputs to the Kontakt outputs.

Lo and behold, they will NOT YET sound properly in Jack. You need to configure Jack first.

So, go back to Jack, go to the connections window, which you open by clicking on "routing." Now, in the left pane, open up the Kontakt 2 ports via the triangle. In the Right Pane, open up Digital Performer via the triangle. Click on Kontakt Output 1 to make it active. Then click (or double clikck) on Digital Performer 1 to connect it to Kontakt. They should turn red. I found this very confusing, for some reason but finally understood it.

Save this setup to load in next time you use Jack.

Back in DP, you assign and route the Jack ports as you would any other audio input.

Assuming you've got MIDI running, you should be able to play kontakt 2 outside of DP and feed its audio into DP. If not, read all the manuals, trace your steps, reboot and run Disk Utility- you know the drill. I don't know if Jack works on Macintel.

You can have as many tracks and Jack clients as you like, says the manual. The kicker is that you must load all your clients (in this example, DP and Kontakt 2) before you can load in the Jack setup file.

Like I said, it's a complicated mess, but once you play around and figure it out, it's understandable. And it does work.

Eleventh Hour Sound · Post by **Eleventh Hour Sound** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 8:50 pm

Jack version .075 (Leopard compatible) is now available at:

http://www.jackosx.com/

If anyone has a step by step (with illustrations : ) for using it with DP I would be interested.

I'd like to keep some of my VI's running outside DP.