Bits from the Release Team: What should go into squeeze?

[David Henningsson]

Adrian Knoth wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 11:20:17AM -0300, Felipe Sateler wrote:
>> On the other hand, for casual use of jack, a more stable version would
>> be preferred over a more featureful one. 
> Unfortunately, this is only half of the story. For the occasional use of
> jack, jackd2 is easier to use, because it can suspend pulseaudio.

Let me add a third half to the story then :-) Lennart (as in the
PulseAudio developer) came up with an idea of reserving / letting go of
audio devices via calls over D-Bus. This is not implemented in jack1.
I haven't tested jackd2, but I believe it is implemented there.

I don't think any of them actually *suspends* PulseAudio.

> In the jackd1 case, the user needs to shutdown pulseaudio or any other
> application blocking the soundcard.

PulseAudio will release the soundcard after a few seconds of no sound
playing. So all you have to do is wait a few seconds, then you're free
to start jackd. An alternative is to call "pasuspender", so that should
be quite simple if you run it from the command line.

Somewhat related is that Ubuntu has a wrapper script, that suspends
PulseAudio when starting qjackctl. Whether this is a good idea or not
can be debated, especially as PulseAudio has a jack module...

// David