[arch-general] PA over JACK: excessive work?

[Sean Greenslade]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 06:53:05PM -0300, riveravaldez via arch-general wrote:
> Hi, I'm using PulseAudio over JACK and noticed in htop that while not
> doing nothing PA works much more than when idle alone, is this
> normal/right?
> 
> This is what I do:
> Close everything that uses audio. Start JACK through qjackctl.
> $ pulseaudio --kill
> $ pulseaudio --start
> (So, PA now works as some kind of bridge redirecting audio through JACK.)
> $ pactl load-module module-jack-sink
> $ pactl load-module module-jack-source
> (So I have general sink/source ports to make connections.)
> 
> But then I check htop and PA is working all the time. Is this normal?
> Am I doing something wrong?
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance.

Can you give some more details about what you're seeing? Specifically,
what CPU / audio hardware you have, if you're using any non-defauly PA
settings, what your buffer size / sample rate is in JACK, what
applications you're running that interface with the sound servers (e.g.
pavucontrol, carla).

I have a fairly complex setup that routes sounds from PA to JACK and
back to PA, and the PA server only consumes ~5% of one CPU core (on an
i7-6600U laptop). Running pavucontrol can cause that number to rise,
though, since each sound source / sink has an audio stream to drive the
VU meter.

--Sean