[LAD] FOSS Ethernet Soundcard

[Patrick Shirkey]

On 11/29/2009 03:36 PM, Ken Restivo wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:33:45AM +0100, Karl Hammar wrote:
>    
>> Nick Copeland:
>>      
>>> Adrian Knoth:
>>>        
>>>> I'm also somewhat interested in the network part, I feel IPv6 could help
>>>> a lot. It supports autoconfiguration and it has decent multicast
>>>> support, so it would be possible to broadcast/multicast the streams on
>>>> the net (LAN). This could be useful if you want to access the stream at
>>>> a mixing console for a life setup and simultaneously record it on a
>>>> computer.
>>>>          
>>> Put another way, it would be far more compatible if this were done over
>>> an IP stream rather than any native ethernet stream, not least it could use
>>> any ethernet driver that linux supports rather than a small subset of them.
>>>        
>> Ack, a standard ip-stream is a sensible first choise.
>>
>>      
>>> Perhaps the project needs to be specified with regards to its goals?
>>>        
>> ...
>>
>> My goals is "just" to extend another project (industrial i/o).
>> What would your goals be ?
>>
>> Shall we decide on a single mailing list ?
>>
>>      
> IIRC the motivation for this was:
>
> 1) Firewire is going away on laptops
> 2) USB 2.0 is proprietary and non-standard
> 3) Because of (1) and (2), Linux Audio users will soon be left without any way to do multichannel recording on laptops.
>
> The original thread converged on a goal pretty quickly: an inexpensive, multi-channel audio interface which is open hardware and software, and uses Gig Ethernet as its physical connection method.
>
> So, if I were going to put the goal simply: I'd like a Focusrite Saffire (or equivalent) that runs over Ethernet, please :-) Price-wise, it'd be nice if it cost the same or less than equivalent USB 2.0 product. Latency-wise, comparable with USB 2.0.
>
> In terms of how many I/O, I think that was still being calculated and experimentation was going to be required. Obviously options for 4, 8, or 16 I/O would be nice.
>
>    


Did anyone have a good reason for not including support for a 
usb-1.0/2.0/3.0 interface seeing as we can write the driver ourselves 
and adhere to the standard?

Most chipsets these days have support for both port types. It would be 
very useful if the schematic provided tracks for both ootb.

BTW, I will be able to contribute development funds towards this project 
if required once we have a BoM.



Cheers.


Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd