Baffling Jacktrip issue #1

[Conrad Kehn]

Hi All,

I have a jack trip duo called Digital Void (link below). 

I am in Denver, my duo partner in Salem, OR. We have a meaningful gig coming up early November. Some of you probably have the same gig. We have recently encountered some tech issues and I could use some input.

The campus where I work put up a Hub server on one of their servers. It's been running since 2020. We both login on Hub clients.

About a month ago we started getting digital dirt in the signal- clicking sounds. Not audio clipping. It is really only on the signals coming from Salem to Denver but not the other way.

About two weeks ago it went from dirty signal to drop outs. 

We went into a round of updates

1. we updated Jack from 1.5.4 to 1.6.4. 
2. I've been using Loopback for a while but we moved my duo partner from jmess to loopback. 
3. I updated my OS from Catalina to Monterrey. This caused an issue I'll address in another thread.
4. We had campus IT restart the server....I'm thinking it might need upgraded as well.

Through trial and error we found raising the buffer to 1024 got rid of the dirt and drop outs....but last week, about 10 minutes into our session they returned.

Thoughts?

Conrad (and Lynn)

[Synthia Cynthia Payne]

Sample rate on mac updates default to 44.1khz. Suggest double-checking input and output sample rate settings both sides. 

On Oct 21, 2022, at 7:36 AM, Conrad Kehn <con...@conradkehn.com> wrote:

Hi All,

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[Synthia Cynthia Payne]

JackTrip calls for 48khz sample rate

On Oct 22, 2022, at 2:11 AM, Synthia Cynthia Payne <synthi...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Synthia Cynthia Payne]

one other anomaly - for me on mac and windows - when the JackTrip interface is in the background or minimized, I do not know why, but the audio signal is compromised. See if keeping the interface visible in front will help maintain the signal. JT Tech team is aware and have not discovered the issue.

synthia

[Kenneth Fields]

isn’t there something called ‘hog mode’ in jack?

Ken

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[Seablade -]

There is, hog mode means that Jack attempts to take exclusive control of the interface and nothing else can change settings on it, or utilize it without going through Jack.  It is possible that when jack is minimized other software takes control of the interface and changes the sample rate for instance, based off posts in this thread, so it would be interesting to see if Hog mode makes a difference or not.

I haven't tested Hog mode in a LONG time, so no idea how well it does or doesn't work these days.  Obviously on Linux it is the only option when connecting to an ALSA device (As opposed to through Puleaudio or Pipewire) but not sure about Mac or Windows these days.

     Seablade

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[Sarah Weaver]

Hi Conrad and Lynn,

Looking forward to your session!

My recommendation here is to try a different server. Then you can know if the issue is the remote server or your local connections. 

Cloud server options include the JackTrip Labs servers, Linode servers, and others. 

Best wishes,

Sarah

[Conrad Kehn]

Thanks everyone.

We double checked all sample rates. Good there.

We will have to do more testing with the Jacktrip not being in the back ground. Today I didn't minimize it but I did have it in background behind my Live GUI as I need to see it for mixing/ manipulating. Is this what people meant by Hog Mode? or is that something else and something we have to make happen?

Sarah- we are also looking into other options for server. Thank you!

Conrad

[Synthia Cynthia Payne]

Conrad: I think you are confusing JACK audio and JackTrip. You mentioned updating *Jack* from 1.5.4 to 1.6.4 - that would be JackTrip because JACK audio is up to version 1.9.21. A lot of people use JACK audio to process and route the audio that gets handed off to JackTrip to send and receive to/from the network.

"hog mode" is a JACK audio thing, not JackTrip so if you're *not* using JACK audio, Hog Mode is irrelevant.

JackTrip only sends and receives audio to/from the network. JackTrip does not process the audio. Audio processing is done by the computer and/or an external audio interface or other device.

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[Seablade -]

Well a couple of things, it is important to note that JackPilot or QJackCTL is not the same as Jack or JackTrip.  JackTrip utilizes Jack in the backend for audio IO, and Jack runs in the background. 

There is a specific setting that has to be enabled for Hog mode to be effective (Sorry not sitting in front of a computer right now with Jack to confirm on Mac or Windows how to do this, I think it used to be in the settings for the appropriate UI (Jackpilot or QJackCTL).  Hog mode means that no other software will be able to utilize the audio hardware directly unless it goes through Jack.

      Seablade

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[Marc]

Thanks , Conrad, for posting this. I have had possibly the same thing happen here. Jacktrip worked well since 2020, suddenly the server has a lot of distortion or clicks - hard to describe - but it is not usable.  Here it the thing though - we also had a Netty McNetace server running and the same thing is happening to it, so this is not a Jacktrip issue.  We have tried everything - replaced everything, including ports and servers (virtual machine to real physical machine, etc) and software. Absolutely no way to fix it after trying for a month. It runs on the IT local areas, but not on the University internet.

My only fix was to set up a server myself on a cloud service, not using the University.  This works fine.   So - our IT people are still working on it, but I have to wonder if there is some new hellish security thingy that they decided to implement that is causing this.  I have no idea, but if I ever am able to return to the University server, I will report back.

Marc

[Conrad Kehn]

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies. 

I am very aware of the differences between all of the similarly named parts of this. Yes, we updated Jacktrip to 1.6.4. I just didn't type the full thing. I can see why that is important to so here thoough.

Sarah, that is on our 'to do' test list. 

Marc, you have very accurately explained our situation. We are going to try P2P with me being at home, and not on campus today. We are also going to try renting server time at some point. There are only 2 of us, so I guess maybe the university server is no longer necessary...but it was cool.

Conrad