jack-dssi-host(1)

✨ jack-dssi-host ✨

bestie. okay so this is a page from the General Commands Manual, and it's about jack-dssi-host — a lil baby JACK host that runs DSSI synth plugins. yes, the manual name is literally in the title up there, i know, i'm just being thorough 💅

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🎀 NAME 🎀

jack-dssi-host — a simple JACK host for DSSI plugins

like. that's it. that's the whole vibe. a simple host. no drama. 🦋

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

jack-dssi-host [-v] [-a] [-n] [-p <projdir>] [-c <cname>] [-<i>]
<libname>[:<label>] [...]

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so jack-dssi-host is a simple DSSI host. what does it do?? it listens for MIDI events on an ALSA sequencer port, delivers those events to DSSI synth plugins, and then pushes the resulting audio out through JACK. that's the whole loop, bestie. midi in, audio out, slay. 🔥

it can host up to 16 instances of DSSI synth plugins at once, and each one gets sequentially assigned a MIDI channel from 1 to 16. so instance one is channel 1, instance two is channel 2, etc etc, you get it, it's giving assigned seating at a wedding 💒

Plugin outputs — assuming you did not pass -a — get connected sequentially to the available JACK physical output ports, and it wraps back to the first JACK port whenever it runs out of available ports. so like, round robin energy. it never stops, it just loops 🌀

Plugin user interfaces (UIs) are started for each instance, as long as you didn't pass -n. and jack-dssi-host will exit when the last plugin UI has exited. so basically it stays alive as long as at least one UI is up. when the last one dips, it dips too. periodt. ✌️

As a special case (okay this one is lowkey iconic): if jack-dssi-host is started with a name other than jack-dssi-host, AND that name (plus an .so suffix) can be found in the DSSI_PATH search path (check the ENVIRONMENT section below bestie) as a valid plugin shared library, AND no further command line arguments are given — then the first plugin in that library gets loaded automatically. it's a whole convenience thing: you can just symlink the plugin's basename to jack-dssi-host and run it like that. chef's kiss. 👑

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -v — Verbose mode. it talks more. spill the tea 💬
• -a — Disable automatic connection of outputs to JACK physical outputs. do it yourself, queen 🫶
• -n — Disable automatic starting of plugin user interfaces (UIs). no windows, just vibes 🪟
• -p <projdir> — The project directory to pass to both the plugin and the UI. everyone gets the same folder 📁
• -c <cname> — The client name to use for ALSA and JACK. name your child 🍼
• -<i> — Number of instances of the following plugin to run (max 16 total, default 1). like -2 means two of them, bestie 👯
• <libname> — Name of the DSSI plugin shared library (.so) to load. this can be an absolute path to the library file, or just the filename itself — and if it's just the filename, the DSSI search path gets searched (again: see ENVIRONMENT below, i gotchu) 🔍
• <label> — the label of the plugin to load from the library. if you leave this out, the first plugin in the library is used. first come first served 💅
• [...] — Optionally more instance counts, plugins and labels. stack 'em up 🧚

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🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

jack-dssi-host -2 lib1.so -1 lib2.so:fuzzy

so what's happening here?? we're running two instances of the first plugin found in lib1.so, assigned to MIDI channels 1 and 2, connected to the first available JACK outputs. and then one instance of the "fuzzy" plugin in lib2.so on MIDI channel 3, connected to the next available JACK output. three plugins, one command, absolutely ate 🍽️

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🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

jack-dssi-host will search for plugin shared libraries in the directories specified by the environment variable DSSI_PATH — which is a colon-separated list of directories. 🫧

if DSSI_PATH is not set, the default search path is:

• /usr/lib/dssi
• /usr/local/lib/dssi
• and (assuming the environment variable HOME is set) $HOME/.dssi

that last one is your home turf, bestie 🏠

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

This manual page was originally created by Mark Hymers from the help text of the application, for the Debian project (but may be freely used by others). we love a generous king 🫶

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okay that's the whole page!! go forth and host some plugins, you absolute main character 🌟

September 18th, 2010 — and yeah, that's the jack-dssi-host(1) version/date energy, so consider this your official sign-off. bye bestie, mwah 💖✨🎀