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QjackCtl JACK Audio Connection Kit - Qt GUI Interface

[Intro] [Screenshots] [Requirements] [Downloads] [Git] [Installation] [Configuration] [Bugs] [Support] [Acknowledgements]

What's QjackCtl ?

QjackCtl is a simple Qt application to control the JACK sound server daemon, specific for the Linux Audio Desktop infrastructure.

Written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit for X11, most exclusively using Qt Designer.

Provides a simple GUI dialog for setting several JACK daemon parameters, which are properly saved between sessions, and a way control of the status of the audio server daemon. With time, this primordial interface has become richer by including a enhanced patchbay and connection control features.

QjackCtl is free, open-source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later.

Project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/qjackctl

Weblog: http://www.rncbc.org

Screenshots

Click on image to see more screenshots...

Requirements

The software requirements for build and runtime are listed as follows:

Mandatory:

Qt 4 (core, gui, xml), C++ class library and tools for crossplatform development and internationalization
http://qt-project.org/
JACK Audio Connection Kit
http://jackaudio.org/

Optional (opted-in at build time):

ALSA, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
http://www.alsa-project.org/

Downloads

Latest release

2014-10-19 - JACK Pretty-names aliasing.
qjackctl-0.3.12.tar.gz

JACK client/port pretty-name (metadata) support is being introduced and seamlessly integrated with old Connections client/port aliases editing (rename) (refactored from an original patch by Paul Davis, thanks). (EXPERIMENTAL)
Application close confirm warning is now raising the main window as visible and active for due top level display, especially applicable when minimized to the system tray.
Messages standard output capture has been slightly improved as for non-blocking i/o, whenever available.
Translations install directory change.
Allow the build system to include an user specified LDFLAGS.
Missing input/output-latency parameter settings now settled for the D-BUS controlled JACK server and firewire back-end driver.

Previous and older releases, including the change log, are also available here. You may also check out from the latest bleeding edge development source tree, using Git.

You can browse all files available for download, including binary packages, at QjackCtl Files on SourceForge.net.

Installation

The installation procedure follows the standard for source distributions. In the extracted source directory, just do:

./configure [--prefix=prefix]
make

and optionally as root:

make install

This procedure will end installing the following files:

prefix/bin/qjackctl
prefix/share/applications/qjackctl.desktop
prefix/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/qjackctl.png
prefix/share/qjackctl/translations/qjackctl_*.qm
prefix/share/man/man1/qjackctl.1

Just launch prefix/bin/qjackctl and you're off (hopefully). Note that the default installation path prefix is /usr/local .

Configuration

QjackCtl holds its settings and configuration state per user, in a file located as $HOME/.config/rncbc.org/QjackCtl.conf. Normally, there's no need to edit this file, as it is recreated and rewritten everytime qjackctl is run.

Bugs

Probably plenty still, QjackCtl maybe considered on beta stage already. It has been locally tested since JACK release 0.98.0, with custom 2.4 kernels with low-latency, preemptible and capabilities enabling patches. As for 2.6 kernels, the emergence of Ingo Molnar's Realtime Preemption kernel patch it's being now recommended for your taking benefit of the realtime and low-latency audio pleasure JACK can give.

Support

QjackCtl is open source free software. For bug reports, feature requests, discussion forums, mailling lists, or any other matter related to the development of this piece of software, please use the Sourceforge project page.

You can also find timely and closer contact information on my personal web site.

Acknowledgements

QjackCtl's user interface primordial layout (and the whole idea for that matter) was partially borrowed from Lawrie Abbott's jacko project, which was just taken from wxWindow/Python into the Qt/C++ arena.

Since 2003-08-06, QjackCtl has been included in the awesome Planet CCRMA software collection. Thanks a lot Fernando!

This project has also a freecode.com entry.
( formerly freshmeat.net )

Dated from 2004-06-08, an online article written by no one else but Dave Phillips, has been published on Linux Journal, introducing you to Qjackctl and also QSynth. Please have a read:

At the Sounding Edge: Using QSynth and QJackCtl.

It's not on every regular day that you get to see one piece of the trade pointing two of your creations right in the title, is it?

Thanks Dave! You rule!

Here are some people who helped this project in one way or another, and in fair and strict alphabetic order:

Alexandre Prokoudine
Andreas Persson
Arnout Engelen
Austin Acton
Ben Powers
Chris Cannam
Dan Nigrin
Dave Moore
Dave Phillips
Dirk Jagdmann
Dominic Sacré

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
Filipe Tomás
Florian Schmidt
Fons Adriaensen
Geoff Beasley
Jack O'Quin
Jacob Meuser
Jesse Chappell
Joachim Deguara
John Schneiderman
Jussi Laako

Karsten Wiese
Kasper Souren
Ken Ellinwood
Kjetil Matheussen
Lawrie Abbott
Marc-Olivier Barre
Matthias Nagorni
Mark Knecht
Melanie
Nedko Arnaudov
Orm Finnendahl

Paul Davis
Robert Jonsson
Robin Gareus
Roland Mas
Sampo Savolainen
Stéphane Letz
Steve Harris
Taybin Rutkin
Wilfried Huss
Wolfgang Woehl

A very special mention should go to the translators of QjackCtl:

Pavel Fric (cs)
Guido Scholz (de)
Adrian Pardini (es)
Raphael Doursenaud (fr)
Sergio Atzori (it)
Takashi Sakamoto (ja)
Peter Geirnaert (nl)
Alexandre Prokoudine (ru)

Thanks to you all.

rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
rncbc at rncbc dot org