[PD-dev] Why not use portaudio per default?

[IOhannes m zmölnig]

On 1/21/22 14:59, Christof Ressi wrote:
> 
>> i never use portaudio, as it never really *worked* for me.
> 
>  From what I read below, what you actually mean is: "I never use 
> portaudio's Jack implementation because it is too limited for my use 
> cases". I can't believe that portaudio never worked for you in general...

i remember having problems (as in: dropouts).
but this was years ago and because i had a running alternative 
(actually: two alternatives - JACK and ALSA) and so i had no incentive 
to spend time in improving my PortAudio experience.

> 
> portaudio already has a Jack-specific API to set the client name: 
> https://github.com/PortAudio/portaudio/blob/master/include/pa_jack.h
> 

probably.
my reference application is still audacity which on my system does not 
set the JACK name (but then: i'm using audacity-2.4.2 which i understand 
is not the latest and greatest)

>> - when using JACK via PortAudio, i can pick a destination where i want 
>> but how do i do any non-trivial routing: e.g. [adc~ 1 2] go to my 
>> soundcard channels 17 & 18 (the headphones), while [adc~ 3 4] go to 
>> JackTrip and all four channels go to Ardour?
> 
> Is this possible with Pd's implementation? How do you do this?

i'm using a dedicated JACK patching software (qjackctl).
the point is that Pd's JACK implementation does not interfere with my 
patching software.

> That's also an issue with some ASIO drivers. At least with ALSA we 
> should check
> 
> 1) does this still happen with the latest portaudio version?
> 
> 2) does portaudio offer a way to disable this?
> 
> 3) can we add a way to disable this?
> 
> Another solution would be to temporarily disable console output (unless 
> "sys_verbose" is set). In fact, this could also be nice on Windows.


i think the proper way would be to have a flag to Pa_Initialize() to 
suppress such output (or even better: a callback)
but that's of course something that needs to be changed in portaudio...

> 
>> - finally when Pd *initializes* PortAudio i get one or more very nasty 
>> and loud click sounds (about 0dBFS). presumably this is because of 
>> some samplerate switching (but i really don't know).
> 
> I never had this problem...
> 
> 1) Is this really a problem with portaudio itself, i.e. does it happen 
> with several apps that use portaudio?

as i said: i see all the problems i described also on audacity.
this includes the click at initialisation.


> 
> 2) If yes, does it still happen with the latest version?

dunno.

> 
> 3) Does it only happen with certain backends?

it happens at initialization time.
e.g. when i start "audacity".
there are no problems when i turn on DSP (or in audacity: when i start 
playback)




fdcdsa
IOhannes
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