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

[Florian Schmidt]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:31:03 -0800
Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:

[snip - thank you very much for clarifying that]

> Anyway, before I depress you too much, I'll stop going there.

Nah, i'm not depressed. I expected something like that though not quite as
high. 

> 
> From my POV a more interesting idea would be to do an external sound
> device, probably 1394 based since that will work for more people.
> Please remember that a PCI card is almost useless for laptop users
> unless we're trying to put this into a cardbus formal also. That adds
> money.
> 
> If it was 1394 based then you can put a 1394 adapter in your PC for
> $20 and then everyone uses the same audio unit. We control how it
> works, so we can follow specs or do it in our own standard. You get
> the advantage of probably more channels and better SNR, but you do
> have to package the unit in a box or some type to be of general use.
> 
> Anyway, those are some ideas for you to chew on. Hope I haven't poked
> a balloon with a pin here...
 

No, i find the alternative of a 1394 device completely acceptable, too. But
how much cheaper would it be? I suppose the logic for talking to the 1394 bus
[?? i don't know anything about firewire, except for 1. serial, 2. faster
than USB] can be put into a FPGA again, right?

For the sake of an example, let's choose a stereo full duplex device with
48khz only samplerate, and with medium to good quality AD/DA's. So we got
like 15-30 bucks for the DA/AD's. What's the rest? How expensive is the FPGA
to control all this? What else is needed? Ok, a case mustn't be pretty, so i
suppose anything will do -> 2-3$ :)

Flo