---
name: "jack-stdin"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "jack-stdio"
version: "1.6-3"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/jack-stdin"
---

# jack-stdin(1)

write JACK audio data to stdin

## NAME

jack-stdin - write JACK audio data to stdin

## SYNOPSIS

**jack-stdin** \[*OPTIONS*\] port1 \[ port2 ...\]

## DESCRIPTION

**jack-stdin** reads raw audio data from standard-input and writes it to a JACK audio port.

The number of given ports detemine the number of audio channels that are used. If more than one channel is given, the input audio-sample data needs to be interleaved.

## OPTIONS

- **-b**, **--bitdepth** *BITS*

  Specify the bit-depth of each sample. For integer-encoding this can be 16 or 24.  The default is 16. This setting is only used for integer encoding: Floating-point samples will always be 32 bit wide.

- **-d**, **--duration** *SEC*

  Specify the time for which jack-stdin should run in seconds. A value less than 1 means to run indefinitely. The default is 0  which reads until end-of-file.

- **-e**, **--encoding** *FORMAT*

  Set the input format of the data: signed-integer, unsigned-integer, floating-point (default: signed)

- **-n**, **--name** *CLIENTNAME*

  Set JACK client name (default: jstdin)

- **-f**, **--file** *FILENAME*

  Read data from given file instead of standard-input.

- **-h**, **--help**

  Print a brief usage information

- **-p**, **--prebuffer** *PERCENT*

  Pre-fill the buffer before starting audio output to JACK (default 50.0%). NOTE: disable pre-buffering (-p 0) or use a small buffer size to play back very short samples.

- **-L**, **--little-endian**

  The input-data is in little-endian byte-order or native-byte-order float (this is the default)

- **-B**, **--big-endian**

  Interpret input audio data in big-endian byte-order or swap the byte-order of floating-point.

- **-q**, **--quiet**

  Inhibit usual output. This affects information and buffer-overflow warnings but not setup-errors.

- **-S**, **--bufsize** *SAMPLES*

  Choose the internal buffer-size in samples. The default size is 65536. The given value will be multiplied by the number of channels and bit-depth to get the size of the ring-buffer. Note: the buffersize must be larger than JACK's period size.

## EXAMPLES

```
  jack-stdout vlc_31994:out_1 vlc_31994:out_2 \
	| sox -t raw -r 48k -e signed -b 16 -c 2 - \
	      -t raw -r 48k -e signed -b 16 -c 2 - \
	   tremolo 5 100 \
	| ./jack-stdin system:playback_1 system:playback_2
  cat /dev/dsp \
	| jack-stdin system:playback_1 system:playback_2
```

## KNOWN ISSUES

jack-stdin is not suitable to play-back files shorter than twice the jack-period size.

## AUTHOR

Robin Gareus \<robin@gareus.org\>.

## SEE ALSO

http://jackaudio.org/,