Welcome to the HoustonPatchbay manual, the JACK patchbay used in RaySession, Patchance and Patchichi.
Overview
This is what your patchbay can look like. Here there are 7 boxes:
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a system box with your ports corresponding to the hardware inputs (microphone, guitar…)
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a system box with your ports corresponding to the hardware outputs (headphones, speakers…)
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an a2j box with your ports corresponding to the MIDI hardware inputs
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an a2j box with your ports corresponding to the MIDI hardware outputs
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a PulseAudio JACK Source box
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a PulseAudio JACK Sink box, sound from firefox and all non JACK applications comes from theses ports
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a Guitarix box
Here A2J and pulse2jack bridges are launched.
You notice that 4 of these boxes are surrounded by a decoration (2 system and 2 a2j), these are the boxes that contain the hardware ports (your audio interface, your USB piano, any controller…).
Some audio ports are grouped into subgroups, which we will call portgroups. These portgroups are mostly stereo pairs automatically detected by the port names. This is the case here for :
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system:capture 1/2
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system:playback 1/2
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PulseAudio JACK Source:front L/R
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PulseAudio JACK Sink:front L/R
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Guitarix:out 0/1
These portgroups facilitate the connections and allow a better general readability.
The blue curved lines correspond to the audio connections. You can observe that :
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hardware input audio ports are connected to PulseAudio JACK Source.
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the PulseAudio JACK Sink ports are connected to the hardware outputs
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only the first port of system is connected to the input (in 0) of the Guitarix software
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the audio ports of Guitarix are connected to the hardware outputs
Make and break a connection
You can establish a connection between 2 ports as long as they meet the following conditions:
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he ports are of the same type (you can’t connect an audio port to a MIDI port)
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one is an input port, the other is an output port
Intuitive Method
To connect or disconnect two ports, click on a port without releasing the mouse button, drag the cursor to the desired port and release the mouse button.
Alternative method
Right click on a port, it will display a drop down menu, choose Connect then the desired port. Click elsewhere to make this menu disappear. The advantage of this method is that it allows you to quickly connect a port to several others, the menu remaining displayed during the connections.
Options
Right click anywhere on the patchbay to display the menu. This menu is also present in the RaySession menu (Patchbay menu). It will allow you to :
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switch the patchbay to full screen
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Find a box with its name
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Filter ports: show only AUDIO, MIDI, CV ports or all of them
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adjust the zoom level
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refresh the canvas: ask JACK again for the list of existing ports and their connections
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Manual: show this manual in the web browser
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Canvas Preferences: display a window of options
All changes in this window take effect immediately. Hover over the boxes to see the tooltips.
Shortcuts you should know
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A double click anywhere switches the patchbay to full screen.
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Ctrl+Mouse Wheel allows you to zoom in/out.
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Alt+Mouse wheel allows to move the view horizontally.
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The wheel button is used to move the view
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Ctrl+middle mouse button cuts all connections passing under the cursor
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Ctrl+F allows to search a box with its name
Burst Connections
It is possible to connect a port or a portgroup to different ports quite quickly. You just have to end your connections with a right click. A video will be much more explicit.
Here we want to connect the multiple outputs of Hydrogen to the Jack-Mixer tracks. In the video the blue circles appear with a right click.
Passing connections from one port to another
Sometimes it is less tedious to switch connections from one port to another than to undo and redo everything. To do this, start from the port that contains the connections and act as if you wanted to make a connection, but go to the port to which you want to switch the connections.
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This only works if the destination port does not contain any connections
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It works from port to port or from portgroup to portgroup but not from port to portgroup
In this video we have a rather complex case where the source is plugged into 3 Band Splitter. The bass and treble (Output 1 and Output 5) are sent directly to EQ6Q Mono while the midrange (Output 3) goes through the distortion GxTubeScreamer first. We want to insert the Dragonfly Room Reverb before the EQ6Q Mono equalization.
Note that with the right-click connection and the switching of connections from one port to another, it is very quick to integrate a new plugin in a chain, as here where we plug Plujain Ramp Live between Dragonfly Room Reverb and EQ6Q Mono.
Special ports
A2J or Midi-Bridge ports
The MIDI ports provided by the A2J (Alsa To Jack) bridge (or Midi-Bridge with Pipewire) have a hole at the end to identify them. Their real name is a long name, but that’s about the only thing that differs from the other MIDI ports.
Control Voltage ports (CV ports)
Control voltage ports, commonly called CV ports, work like regular audio ports, however, they can control one or more parameters with much more precision than MIDI ports. As their stream is not meant to be listened to, it is not possible to simply connect a CV output port to a regular audio input, as this could damage your headphones, your speakers, and maybe even your ears.
If you still want to do it, right click on one of the ports, then Connect, then the DANGEROUS menu.
You can’t say you weren’t warned, and it’s almost impossible to do this by mistake.
On the other hand, connecting a classic audio output port to a CV input port is perfectly possible, no problem.
Edit Theme
You have the possibility to modify theme colors, it is quite easy and fast to do.
For more informations, read how to edit themes.