JACK vs. PulseAudio?

faux · n00b Joined: 26 Oct 2007 Posts: 61 Location: Linz, Austria

Hi!
What's the difference between JACK and PulseAudio? As far as I know are both systems audio server, is that correct? Are these two systems comparable, or are there different fields of application?

Faux

nero37 · Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 10:26 pm Post subject:

Hi, pulseaudio is a sound server that basically sits between the audio program and the sound card. you can use it to manipulate the audio stream, such as redirecting the channels to separate sound cards or sending the audio stream across a network to a another pc.

JACK enables audio programs to send and receive audio streams between them, for instance one piece of software could be creating a audio stream and the other could be encoding it as a mp3 file.

Id highly recommend giving pulseaudio a try, you can do some cool things with it. I use it to stream audio from music and films on my notebook to my stereo system across my wireless network.

faux · n00b Joined: 26 Oct 2007 Posts: 61 Location: Linz, Austria

Thank's for your answer!
I'm currently using PulseAudio for a few days now and I really like it. Especially the ability to play sound through the network.

When I searched through the portage tree I recognized that more applications support JACK than PulseAudio, because of this I wanted to know where exactly the differences are.

faux · n00b Joined: 26 Oct 2007 Posts: 61 Location: Linz, Austria

Another one:
PulseAudio has JACK support, there is a JACK module. Is it possible to tunnel through JACK to PulseAudio, if an application only supports JACK, but not PulseAudio?

nero37 · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 12:30 pm Post subject:

Yes to my knowledge this can be done, the modules module-jack-sink and module-jack-source can connect the servers together. I have never tried this but would certainly be worth a try.

Though I don't think this is entirely necessary as almost any app that supports alsa or oss can use pusleaudio via its compatibility layer.

krinkle · Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 5:56 am Post subject:

I know that jacks aim is to be a real-time sound server... more inline with pro audio type stuff. is pulseaudio equivalent in that regard?

nero37 · Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject:

Yes and no. They are both real-time sound servers and have a lot of similar functionality, but are aimed at different markets. As I described above JACK is useful for creating and manipulating audio while Pulseaudio is just for playing/capturing audio.