Re: [Bug-gnuzilla] Suggestion to enable JACK audio backend in IceCat

[Damien Zammit]

On 17/12/17 00:56, Narcis Garcia wrote:
> I like this proposal, if not interferes with any other feature,
> performance or license.

For clarification:

1) The feature it adds (a new audio backend) does not interfere with any
other features of the browser, except for one caveat; in the case where
the user is running two different audio servers simultaneously, JACK and
PulseAudio.   In this case, IceCat would always connect to JACK with no
possible way to select PulseAudio instead due to the hardcoded priority
of JACK over PulseAudio.  This little problem was solved in version 55
of firefox because I added a runtime about:config preference to select
any audio backend manually.  I don't see this as a big problem for
IceCat 52.3.0 because anyone who runs JACK would probably not be using
PulseAudio at the same time.  Even if they did run both, I assume they
prefer to have the audio routing through JACK if they were running
jackd.  In conclusion, I think it's better to have the option of JACK
with this small caveat than not have it at all.

2) The performance of the browser is the same, but probably less CPU
usage when JACK backend is in use instead of PulseAudio although I
haven't measured it.  Not to mention the new ability to route audio
anywhere to and from the browser.

3) The licence is the same because the code is already part of Firefox
upstream, it's just one compile time flag to enable it.

Thanks,
Damien