[PlanetCCRMA] aRts and alsa

[Bruce Elliott]

I run KDE, and I believe I also run the artsd sound server, although not 
for any reason beyond my not knowing how to turn it off.  I have also 
successfully gotten alsa working with my soundcard, can start JACK, and 
have managed to launch Ardour, although I haven't been able to record 
just yet.

My question is how does the native sound system of KDE (aRts, I assume) 
interact with alsa and jack?  Should I be attempting to disable all of 
the arts processing in favor of equivalent jack-aware processes?

Something else, which I believe is related, is that I currently have 
some .wav sounds that are set to play in response to certain KDE window 
management events.  They work just fine until I start jack, after which 
they stop, until I log off and then back on again.  It's not important 
to me that I hear a noise when I minimize a window, but I'd like to 
understand why this happens.

Note: under the KDE Control Center | Sound & Multimedia | System 
Notifications | Player Settings ... , I have *not* selected to use an 
external player.  Should I set this to a jack-aware player, if jack is 
running and I insist on hearing system notifications? 

One final thing, which again I think is related - so far I have only a 
generic cheap soundcard, into which I've plugged a similarly generic and 
cheap microphone, just for testing.  The mike picks up sounds, which I 
can hear being echoed through the speakers, but I don't seem to get any 
signals that make it to Ardour.  In fact, if I run the aRts Control 
Tool, it doesn't show any signal being passed through at all.  Is my 
soundcard simply passing the analog signal directly to the speakers?  
I've made connections from "alsa_pcm | capture_1" and "alsa_pcm | 
capture_2" to Ardour, but I still don't see any signal.

What am I missing?

thanks,
Bruce E.