Main menu
You are here
qjackctl and MIDI on Mac (Snow Leopard) / core audio
Hello!
I just discovered this GUI and it looks like it could make life easier for me -- I've been using JackPilot with the latest Jack OS X version up to now.
I installed qjackctl, corrected the server routing (as mentioned in another post here), specified "core audio," sample rate, etc., and the server started up fine. The only thing is: in the Connections window's MIDI section, I get no clients/ports. In JackPilot, I get two ins and outs for my external sound card, two each for Max/Msp, and one each for the looping software that I use.
JACK itself has already been routing MIDI for me, and I'm wondering why qjackctl is not showing me the ports. I notice, in the setup window, that selecting the driver "Core Audio" eliminates the "Midi Driver" option -- this makes sense, since Core Audio handles MIDI, so I assume this is as it should be...
Can anybody tell me what I might be forgetting or doing wrong here? Or is qjackctl unable to do the MIDI connections on Macs (I really hope it _is_ able!)?
Thx & best,
C
Additional problem/question...
...regardless of whether MIDI will work, this GUI should be worthwhile even just for no-hassle sound routing. BUT...
...I have now set it up to auto-run at startup. This made the GUI always appear, which I didn't really want. So I went into the preferences and set it to "minimize" to the login items at top right on the OS X desktop. And now nothing I do will make the GUI reappear -- doubleclicking on the icon gives me only the Qjackctl dropdown menu at top left, and "Preferences" there is grey and inaccessible -- "command comma" also has no effect.. I have even deleted and reinstalled the software, and when started, it runs with the old preferences, minimized to the top right-hand taskbar with no access to the GUI. If there is no way to resolve this, then qjackctl is completely useless.
1. Why did this happen?
2. How do I resolve it?
3. How do I prevent it from happening again?
Do I just have a faulty build? I think I downloaded it directly from the right place, but I'm not sure...
Thanks for any advice,
C
re. qjackctl and MIDI on Mac (Snow Leopard) / core audio
i must tell you that qjackctl is meant to Linux and X11 window system primarily. all other platforms are not well supported or at all. although there used to be a windows port bundled on the jackdmp (nee jack2) package distribution it is not maintained by me, sorry. and i don't even know about macosx, a system that i never come close ever, nor wish to, i confess.
that said, i'm afraid you're on your own, sorry again.
but there are some hints i can help you anyway:
re. midi driver: find out which command line option is in charge for setting up the jack-midi driver on your system (ask for
jackd -d coreaudio --help) and enter it literally as the 'Server Suffix' setting in Setup/Settings/Parameters.re. minimized to system tray: this is kind of option that obviously doesn't work on the osx environment, or will work in unexpected ways if at all. don't use it, unless you know what you're doing, because i don't :)
cheers
Gotcha -- thanks for your
Gotcha -- thanks for your quick response! I've since tried some things successfully, and I'll write the following in case any other interested Mac OS X people might be helped by it:
I first figured out that I was using an older version than I thought I was...
Tried to compile the latest version for Mac OS and quickly gave up (seeing as I'm a complete non-programmer with zero experience/knowledge in this department, and I wasn't able to locate/install the exact qt library version it seemed to want ... a later one didn't work).
The newest ready-made .dmg build of qjackctl that I could find was 0.3.6, and there's a link to it (in 64/32-bit and 32-bit versions) here: http://sourceforge.net/p/floctrl/wiki/configuration/
I installed the version for intel 32/64 machines, and updated my Jack OS X version to the corresponding one (for some reason, I only had the 32-bit version before).
The MIDI-related issue is unchanged (which is alright; I can route my MIDI through Max/MSP, anyway -- but I will see if your jack midi driver setup suggestion helps, thank you!) But on the positive side: I risked trying the system tray option, and it works reasonably well. With one "unexpected" behavior: when in the system tray, qjackctl (whether server is actually running or not) will _always_ interrupt computer shutdown and demand attention. If one cancels shutdown, qjackctl closes automatically and one can then successfully shut down the computer with no interruption. There is of course no interruption to shutdown if you quit qjackctl beforehand.
So for me, it's still seems to be a good option: whenever I'm frequently doing music with this machine, I can put qjackctl in my startup items with the "start server at startup" option checked. The patchbay's storage of the connections I need works perfectly. These two things mean that, for me, it seems to be a better option than Jack Pilot, because I spend a lot less time loading and setting up things.
Thanks once again for replying!
Add new comment