Something to get excited about

[The Lone Roger]

Something very exciting may soon be happening in the world of OS X audio; have a look at the URL below, BUT before you do, the bad news is that the 'download' link doesn't work right now, as I understand it, the developers are ironing out a few bugs. Now feast yer eyes on:

http://www.meskalina.it/elementicaotici/dev/jack.html

Yep, what this means is the ability to pipe audio to/from any audio app to/from any other, and preliminary reports suggest that the whole system is pretty light on CPU usage too. Also, as it is not dependant on the goodwill of individual software manufacturers there is nothing Digi can do to stop it !
This means VST FX in Pro Tools at last, Max/MSP processing in Pro Tools, Reason, Live etc. etc.
So to hell with Rewire & Direct Connect - bring on Jack

[Chris Coleman]

So to hell with Rewire

YEAH!!!!!!! Let's use potentially buggy vaporware with NO MIDI implementation INSTEAD of a very well coded audio/MIDI bridge between PT and other apps!!!!!!!!!! SWEEEEEEET!!!!!!! (:|)

[The Lone Roger]

...except it's not vapourware, it's been around in the Linux world for some time, so it's tried & tested. It was also available for OS X (and folks who've tested it have described it's performance was "jaw dropping") but the developers, rather than putting out betas with bugs, chose to withdraw the download until they were happy that it was fully ready. Shame more deveopers don't do that.
I have no issues with Rewire, but like I said, Rewire depends on the host's developer to give it 'permission' to use their software, whereas Jack is designed to work whether or not Digidesign choose to adopt it - like they choose not to allow VST plug-ins to work with their software, and have even gone as far as to try to thwart other developers' work arounds.
And yes, it is audio 'only', but inter-app midi is supposed to be implemented in Panther anyway, so I really don't see what the problem is.
Like I say, sounds like good news to me, but go ahead and stick with Rewire if you prefer.

[Datus]

the whole vst thing is moot seeing as they are about to release a wrapper....

[Homebelly]

Roger,,do you know how much this will be selling for,,?
Also,,how exactly dose this dohickie work,,are you able to actualy transfer audio from one app to another,,say so that i can record audio to a track in PT from a stand alone synth and have it as appear as a region,,or is it just a way of having two apps open at the same time and sharing the hardware,,
Would this mean that if you were to prosess audio from PT through a VST/AU effect that the results would not be able to be recorded back into pt in real time,,?
And do you also know how the pluggo for OSX release is coming along?,,last i heard it was NOV 14,,

[The Lone Roger]

As far as i know, Jack will be free, after all it's a Linux thing...and as i understand it, you can think of it just like an audio server, so you can pump audio around from one app to another in real time, and yes you could process audio from PT and then record it back into PT in real time.
As for OS X Pluggo, I don't know. Cycling 74 have been pretty busy with the Windoze port of Max etc. but they did say something recently about it being the next priority, so hopefully soon.
The really exciting thing for me about Jack would be the ability to process audio to/from PT using Max/MSP, which would somewhat do away with the need for Pluggo, though of course there are advantages to the Pluggo architecture too, and C74's own plugs a definitely worth having,
cheers
Roger

[FrankEEE]

Maybe try the following link for a download of the JAS:
http://www.grame.fr/~letz/jack.html
(I haven't installed it yet)

[The Lone Roger]

Maybe try the following link for a download of the JAS:
http://www.grame.fr/~letz/jack.html
(I haven't installed it yet)

Someone from the Jack dev team said that that was 'old stuff' and that the new stuff that we should be downloading was that I mentioned at the (currently inactive) link above.
I did download the Jack Server and Jack Pilot, but couldn't figure out how to set it up. I think Johnny's new tools do away with the arcanery of the Console and put it all in a nice simple GUI that even us dumb muso's can understand