JACK-PLAY(1)

📦
this version · 5 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ JACK-PLAY(1) ✨

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about jack-play from the JACK manual pages and honestly? it's giving underrated icon 💅

🎀 NAME 🎀

jack-play — the JACK Sound File Player. that's it, that's the whole name. short. simple. slay. 👑

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

jack-play [options] sound-file...

so like. options first, then one or more sound files. as many as you want. girl math. ✨

💖 OPTIONS 💖

every single one, no skips, we don't do skips here:

  • -b — sets the disk buffer size, in frames. default? 4096. and listen: this value must be a power of two, no cap. and if the JACK period size ever exceeds this value at any point, the player will halt. like, full stop, lights off. 😭 so pick your power of two wisely.
  • -c — picks the sample rate conversion algorithm. default is 2. the values are literally: SRC_SINC_BEST_QUALITY = 0, SRC_SINC_MEDIUM_QUALITY = 1, SRC_SINC_FASTEST = 2, SRC_ZERO_ORDER_HOLD = 3 and SRC_LINEAR = 4. bestie there is a whole spectrum from "gorgeous" to "fast and feral" here 🌈
  • -i — sets the initial disk seek, in frames. default is 0. starting from the top, as one does 🎀
  • -m — sets the minimal disk transfer size, in frames. default is 32. heads up: this one is an optimization switch, so it's a tuning knob, not a vibe change 🧚
  • -n — sets the client name. default is jack-play. name your child 🫶
  • -q — sets the frame size used to request data from the ringbuffer. default is 64. also an optimization switch. lowkey the plumbing dials of this whole operation 🔥
  • -r — sets the resampling ratio multiplier. default is 1.0. yes, with the decimal. keep the decimal.
  • -t — runs in JACK transport aware mode. it knows about the transport now. it's locked in. main character energy 🚂
  • -u — do not make the client name unique by appending the process identifier. so if you want everyone to see the same name every time, this is your girl. (normally it does append the PID, but not this time periodt)
  • hmm wait that's only nine. recount: -b, -c, -i, -m, -n, -q, -r, -t, -u. yeah, nine. we're good. ✅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so jack-play is a light-weight JACK sound file player. light-weight! she's not doing too much, she's just playing files and looking cute 💅

here's the way it works: it creates as many output ports as there are channels in the input file. three channels in the file? three output ports. no notes. 👑

then, connections: it will connect to the ports mentioned in the environment variable JACK_PLAY_CONNECT_TO, which must include a %d pattern to indicate the port number. and if it doesn't have that? girl, it implements no connection logic at all. none. zero. in that case you're supposed to use jack-plumbing(1) instead. the delegation is real 🤝

as for what it can read: jack-play will read files in any format supported by libsndfile, and it will resample to match the server sample rate using libsamplerate. so basically it eats whatever libsndfile can chew 🍓

🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

Written by Rohan Drape http://rd.slavepianos.org/ 🌟

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

🦄 AUTHOR (again, because she said it twice and honestly? respect) 🦄

  • Rohan Drape <rd@slavepianos.org>
    • Author.
ok so that's the whole page. go forth and play your sound files, bestie. 🫶

this was JACK-PLAY(1), dated 10/04/2025 — that's the version/date stamp at the bottom, and yes i'm putting it in the sign-off because it deserves its moment. mwah. 💖✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from