[linux-audio-dev] Re: [Alsa-devel] Firewire Audio Card Support

[Lee Revell]

On Thu, 2004-11-18 at 23:35 +0100, Jens M Andreasen wrote:
> On tor, 2004-11-18 at 15:44 +0100, Amaury Jacquot wrote:
> > 
> > what's the rationale behind the "we won't release any docs" nonsense ?
> 
> Short answer: IP! (Intellectual Propererty!) Combine that with PHB
> (Pointy Haired Boss), and you can't tell anything obvious without
> loosing your job.

Yup, more specifically, "our competitors will rip off our hardware
design".  This is why vendors will often give out hardware, and even
help driver writers once they have it working.  They just want to keep
the learning curve steep for someone who just grabs it off the shalf.

That being said, sound cards are not rocket science (or more aptly they
are not GPUs).  Use a DSP with a documented instruction set and wire it
to ADC & DAC.

Lee