[LAD] FFADO 2.0 released

[Pieter Palmers]

The FFADO team is proud and happy to announce the release of FFADO 2.0.0.

As the release candidates have been around for almost one year now 
without a significant amount of bug reports we feel confident that the 
current code-base has matured. Around the end of november the 1000-th 
device was registered as being used with FFADO, which seemed to be a 
nice number to triggered the release.

Furthermore on December 2 the Linux kernel version 2.6.32 has been 
released. This version fixes the new kernel FireWire drivers such that 
they are compatible with FFADO. So once the distributions pick up this 
kernel the old/new kernel stack confusion should be history.

Thanks go out to the vendors that provided us with gear to support for 
the 2.0 release: Echo Digital Audio, Edirol, Ego Systems Inc, Focusrite, 
Mackie and Terratec. Kudos for their early-bird support!

Special thanks also go to BridgeCo and TC Applied for providing us with 
their development platforms and for helping with vendor contacts. Their 
support makes that FFADO covers the most widely used platforms for 
FireWire audio and that we can quickly implement support for new devices.

Looking ahead to the 2.1 release we can announce that we have 
implemented (basic) support for additional devices from Focusrite, 
Behringer, Stanton and TC Electronic. We plan to move to beta-testing 
2.1 fairly soon as development on it has been ongoing for more than a 
year now. Additionally, work is being done on the RME devices, but its 
not yet known when that will be finished. Support for some other vendors 
is in the pipeline, so stay tuned for more announcements.

A second major development is the move of the streaming infrastructure 
to kernel space. A kernel-space implementation will bring significant 
improvements with respect to reliability and efficiency. Furthermore it 
will allow to expose an ALSA interface, meaning that the scope of 
FireWire audio on Linux is extended significantly. Thanks to the Google 
Summer of Code and the Linux Foundation, work on this has been done 
during the summer. The code is not yet ready for use, but things are moving.


More information can be found here:
http://www.ffado.org/?q=release/2.0.0

For the eager, a direct download link:
http://www.ffado.org/files/libffado-2.0.0.tar.gz


On behalf of the FFADO team,

Pieter Palmers