[LAD] question on ADAT S/MUX using snd-ice1712 and Alesis AI4

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 10/01/2010 09:20 PM, Niels Mayer wrote:

> Would I be able to "transparently" use these "S/MUX"d channels in a
> linux DAW, by simply recording/playing-back a higher channel count per
> track (e.g. 4 for a stereo track, 2 for a mono)?

yes, if it's just about acquisition and you don't intend to do any 
processing with it. btw, each half of a smuxed stream should be a 
reasonable 48k/24bit stream btw, which you could listen to, not noise.

> Next question: to avoid the hack suggested above, is there some kind
> of ALSA plugin that would reconstitute/create synchronized pairs of
> S/MUX data on the same soundcard into single 24/96 streams, both for
> input and output? How is S/Mux handled in Linux&  ALSA?

i'm not aware of any software implementation of smuxing, but i'd be 
interested to hear more about it. the only times i've used smuxing was 
with a focusrite pro26 and a rme hdsp, both of which seem to do it 
either in hardware or at the driver level, so that the user doesn't get 
to see how it's done.