[linux-audio-user] Re: [Freebob-devel] [ANN] FreeBoB 1.0 released - Firewire Audio for Linux

[Leonard "paniq" Ritter]

congratulations, good work!

looking forward to the alsa side of things :)

On Wed, 2006-10-18 at 15:59 +0200, Pieter Palmers wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> Now that JACK 0.102.20 and QJackCtl 0.2.21 being released, the FreeBoB 
> team is proud to present libfreebob 1.0. The FreeBoB project aims to 
> provide a generic solution for using Firewire (semi-)pro-audio devices 
> in Linux.
> 
> This release provides support for the devices based on the BridgeCo 
> DM1000 or DM1500 chipset that are running the BeBoB firmware. For a list 
> of supported devices, consult our website at freebob.sf.net.
> 
> FreeBoB currently provides an interface library that allows firewire 
> audio devices to be used with the JACK audio server, using a dedicated 
> backend. This backend is included in the official JACK releases, from 
> this version on (i.e. 0.102.20). The latest version of QJackCtl also 
> includes support for this FreeBoB backend. MIDI support is provided 
> through ALSA sequencer.
> 
> Feature list:
> * Automatic detection & configuration of devices. If there are multiple 
> devices attached to the same firewire bus, freebob merges them into one 
> big device. The devices have to be synced externally (wordclock/spdif) 
> so that they don't drift. Note that this release cannot setup the boxes 
> to be synced yet, being synced is a precondition at the moment. (I 
> tested this with 2 phase88's connected with wordclock, and this works 
> without the need for any special setting because the Phase88 
> automatically chooses wordclock slave when there is a wordclock signal 
> present. This can be different for other models).
> * Audio I/O on all analog channels at all sample rates supported by the 
> device. SPDIF/ADAT I/O works in most cases (when presented as analog IO 
> by the device). AC3 passthrough doesn't work.
> * Midi I/O for all midi ports the device implements, using alsa-sequencer
> * Round-trip latency figures around 5ms (depends on system 
> configuration). 10ms is achievable on all well-configured machines
> 
> Not supported yet:
> * Hardware mixing ("zero latency" mixer)
> * Device-specific configuration (input gain switches, sync source 
> selection, midi control mappings, ...)
> * ALSA for audio IO
> * Special SPDIF/ADAT stream support
> 
> You can download FreeBoB 1.0 at our sourceforge page:
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=117802
> more info at freebob.sf.net
> 
> What's next?
> 
> We are working on the second generation of the FreeBoB codebase. The 1.0 
> release is the endpoint for the codebase that dates back to the start of 
> the project. The 2.0 codebase is a complete redesign of the system using 
> 1.0 as a 'golden spec'. While the 1.0 version is BeBoB-only, the 2.0 
> codebase is designed as a framework to support all firewire based audio 
> boxes. The current level of functionality is almost the same for both 
> codebases. The main difference is that 1.0 had one year of testing and 
> 2.0 doesn't, it's still in the alpha stage. Needless to say that 2.0 
> will outperform 1.0 by far ;).
> 
> Of course this redesign isn't for the sake of aesthetic beauty or lack 
> of things to do... I can announce that we are already working on 
> broadening the supported device list. Currently there is support for the 
> Motu Traveller and the Motu 828 (through reverse engineering). There are 
> also contacts with the DICE-II developers to implement generic support 
> for devices based upon their chipset. As an extra, support for Metric 
> Halo devices is also in the pipeline. Once all of these devices are 
> supported, we will cover a very large part of the Firewire audio device 
> spectrum. The most important void will be RME Fireface support, and for 
> the real budget users: Behringer and Hercules devices.
> 
> That's all folks!
> 
> Pieter Palmers
> (on behalf of the FreeBoB team)
> 
> 
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-- 
-- leonard "paniq" ritter
-- http://www.mjoo.org
-- http://www.paniq.org