Sinks available but Pulseaudio working only partially - PulseAudio JACK Sink

[jorgealfonso]

Hello,

I recently made a fresh install of Ubuntu Studio. I am overall positively impressed: this release looks pretty solid (the former one was bad) and almost everything worked out-of-the-box.

One of the few things not working out of the box is Pulseaudio trough Jack.

I've done this setup before (even by hand, some time ago when the sinks were not very well integrated yet) but this time I'm getting contradictory symptoms and I'm a bit lost... I am using QjackCtl.

Symptoms:
- The sinks are available in the Connection Panel. They connect automatically to the correspondent system playback input ports.
- Most audio applications won't output any sound (ex: VLC, youtube through web browser, xbmc) but at least they don't freeze. As soon as I stop jack, they start sounding again.
- The confusing part is that some DO WORK through the sinks, such as Audacity. If I disconnect the Pulseaudio Jack sinks (front-left and front-right) it DOES disconnect, so I am sure that the sinks and Pulseaudio are somehow working at least partially.

I look at the forums and on the internet but I couldn't find this particular case (in most posts it's just not working at all. The sinks are just not there)

Would appreciate so much if you could put me on the right track for this one!!

Thanks a lot!


PS: Probably an obvious note, but I'll still mention it just in case: if I try to start jack with a pulseaudio application running (say, audacity or xbmc) jack won't start and will freeze ("hw:0 already in use" according to the log... need to kill jackdbus from the terminal). So, before starting qjackctl I have to close all the pulseaudio applications.

[jorgealfonso]

BUMP

Anyone could at least point me towards the good direction? something I could try? Thanks.

[CrocoDuck]

Hi. Basically I don't know how to help you, but try to verify if those programs (i.e. VLC) are configured to use pulsaudio (should be default) instead of directly ALSA. An easy way to do it is open the GUI pulsaudio mixer while an audio program is running and check if that program appears into the pulsaudio mixer. Of course, with JACK off.

[jorgealfonso]

CrocoDuck> You might be sending me on the right direction! All of the programs appear on the Pulseaudio Mixer, but only those that worked with Jack read "Alsa Playback" (ex: Audacious and Audacity on the attached screenshot)

So, this would mean that the pulseaudio sinks are NOT working AT ALL. The fact that some applications worked is now explained: they were simply not using pulseaudio...

Don't have a clue yet why the sinks don't work, but at least the scenario looks less confusing now!