[linux-audio-dev] Re: GPL Audio Hardware

[james at dis-dot-dat.net]

On Tue, 04 Apr, 2006 at 04:25AM -0500, Richard Smith spake thus:
> On 4/4/06, Dmitry Baikov <dsbaikov at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > You are right in your comments, but please, take it easier.
> >
> > Richard and OGP company have no illusions about them being audio professionals.
> > And yes, it's more useful to look at RME, Echo, M-Audio, but keep it
> > cool, please ;)
> 
> Its ok.  I was prepared for the responses.  I think the candid
> opinions have value, keep em comming.  I'll point Tim at the RME,
> Echo, and M-Audio to look at as examples.
> 
> Basically OGD1 is a big FPGA board with 256Mb of DDR RAM and some nice
> clean high speed analog and digital ouputs.  The question Tim is
> asking (audio cluelessness aside) are:

My personal views:
 
> Can the audio community use such a board?

I'd love to see something like this, but at a reasonable cost.  I have
a grant application in at the moment to work on something related...

> Will they help in producing the feature set and design?

Of course.  We like talking.

> What features would it need?

Off the top of my head: 

1. Samprerate conversion - fastfastfast!

2. Allocatable memory.  It would be nice to be able to allocate memory
   on the card as long as it came with some benefits:
      i.  Fast access
      ii. Playing straight from card-ram to outputs
      ii. Others...

3. Convolution.  And/or frequency domain filtering.

4. Audio-specific instructions sound good, but I don't know exactly
   what they would be, yet.  Start with a point operation, so we can
   do things like gain adjustments fast and maybe wave shaping?

5. Something like shader for audio?  Am I dreaming?  
   
6. JACK in hardware?  With the features above, this could be very nice.

> What would they pay for it?

As little as possible.  I personally might manage 300 quid (600
dollars-ish).  And we'd love you, of course.  Physically, if it's as
good as I hope ;)

For me, if this cost $1000 upwards, it would just be another piece of
hardware to dream about owning.

James


-- 
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.  Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)