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Old 12-17-2011, 11:21 AM   #13
stefanha
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 18
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> It would be better to target JACK natively. JACK runs on Windows, OSX and Linux and you may avoid the latency issues going via PortAudio may risk.

I agree it would be technically better: portable audio API with low latency and flexible routing options. However it requires that users install JACK, configure it, and run the daemon:

http://jackaudio.org/jack_on_windows

Users who simply connect their instrument do not need routing. Even experienced digital audio users may not know JACK if they are on Windows or Mac. Requiring JACK adds an extra step (and things that can go wrong) that is only needed for software instruments, VSTs, etc.

I think native JACK would be a hurdle to the "plug in your instrument and start jamming" experience.

Latency actually does not worry me. Ninjam is not latency-sensitive because the audio is buffered. The only low-latency part of Ninjam is software monitoring (unmuting yourself), which does not work well today anyway because the code does not take real-time precautions (avoiding memory allocations, no blocking operations, pinning memory, etc).
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