[linux-audio-dev] Route Stantons Final Scratch to internal sound cards?

[Pieter Palmers]

Vincent Touquet wrote:

>On Sun, Jan 26, 2003 at 04:02:59PM +0100, Modnogg wrote:
>(cut)
>  
>
>>Do you think it's possible to route the USB sound cards to my internal
>>sound cards?
>>I could use the sound driver library from linux. But my problem is how
>>to link the software to other soundcards?
>>    
>>
>(cut)
>
>Here you can find out how to run FS on any Linux distro:
>http://www.bostonraves.org/story/2002/11/11/162146/33
>
>Apparently FS needs devfs and gets its audio from
>both /dev/scratchamp/0 and /dev/scratchamp/1.
>  
>
As I expected, they use their own device drivers, and probably won't use 
the normal linux audio layer. Which means that you'll have to figure out 
the interfaces between the 'scratchamp' module and the FS software...

>I think if you can make devfs to point /dev/scratchamp/*
>to the device nodes of other soundcards, you can use
>these other soundcards instead of the ones provided
>by Stanton.
>
don't think so... that would require the FS software to use a standard 
interface. And I don't think they do.
Why do I think this?
Their scratchamp is not freely distribuable & not open-source, so 
according to GPL they can't use existing linux code in it (correct?). 
Meaning that they will have to build the whole driver from scratch. So 
why bother providing standard interface? From a commercial point of 
view, it's even better not to. If they use their own interface, it will 
be very difficult for people to figure it out. So anyone that want's to 
use FS, needs the scratchamp device. Which means that you have to buy 
the whole package. In this way, illegal distribution of the program is 
quite useless. And profit/piece are much larger when also supplying the HW.

I think of this as a very effective solution for stopping illegal copies 
of your software. After all, the DJ market is pretty small, and there 
are a lot of programs (both win as linux) that provide MP3-mixing 
capabilities. So as a company you have make the difference. Stanton 
clearly chose to aim for the (semi-) pro DJ by the turntable-thing 
(those are expensive too), narrowing the market even further. Less 
volume sold = more profit a piece needed. So you supply a complete 
solution, which gives you more profit and more protection against 
software theft. Pretty clever. I wouldn't use standard interfaces if I 
were to design this.

>
>That depends greatly of course as to what degree the 
>USB hardware by Stanton is a normal audio device.
>I think there is also a pre-amp in there and possibly
>other undocumented stuff going on ?
>
Probably.

>
>But you can always try of course :)
>
What I think could be possible is using (writing a driver for) the 
scratchamp with OSS or ALSA drivers, as they seem to be USB soundcards 
by creative. Those will have standard chipsets.
But that wasn't the question I guess...


Pieter

BTW: how is it possible that the scratchamp module works on a kernel 
version other that the one it was built on? According to the link above, 
the Final Scratch distro is a 2.4.18, but it should  work with any 
kernel > 2.4.17. I always thought that new kernel = recompile modules? 
or is this what they mean by 'versionned kernel'? Might be a stupid 
question, but I'm not that much of a linux expert.