[LAU] status usb2 for sound

[Patrick Shirkey]

On 11/08/2009 06:47 PM, Ken Restivo wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 07, 2009 at 11:04:15AM +0100, Arnold Krille wrote:
>    
>> On Friday 06 November 2009 10:28:26 Florian Faber wrote:
>>      
>>>> the great advantage of firewire devices from my POV is that you can
>>>> easily share your device between your studio PC and your mobile kit for
>>>> on-location recording. the only alternative to that kind of flexibility
>>>> is an RME [multi|digi]face with both a hdsp expresscard and a pcie card.
>>>> which is in an entirely different price bracket.
>>>>          
>>> Just in case you haven't noticed: Firewire is dead. The number of
>>> devices with a firewire port is decreasing rapidly.
>>> I wouldn't advocate Firewire devices anymore for new buyers.
>>>        
>> But there are no alternatives. USB1 is to slow, USB2 has no (widely accepted)
>> standard. USB3 has no devices yet, don't know whether it defines a standard.
>>
>>      
> Well, yes, of course there are alternatives: run Windoze, which is what these bastards want to force us to do, isn't it?
>
> *sigh*. Haven't we already gone through this struggle before, with 3D video cards, and WiFi cards, and webcams, and input devices, just about every possible peice of computer hardware? In the last decade that I've been using Linux, I've seen this same problem come up again and again... and also seen it solved again and again.
>
> It's getting tedious, but, at the same time, it's not a new problem and since it's been solved before, there are ready answers and a suite of different solutions that have worked before, including: pressuring the manufacturers, reverse-engineering, NDIS/Wine, negotiations and payments, etc.
>
> Unless of course some enterprising hardware engineer wants to create an open-source, fully-documented USB2 audio interface, knowing they'd have a ready market in the couple dozen or so LAU members.
>
> Hmm, come to think of it, that might be an interesting project. Take apart a commercial, unsupported USB2 audio interface, see what chips they're using, look up the data sheets for those chips, and design an interface along similar lines, but open up the USB2 interface so that a Linux GPL driver can be written for it. These things can't be marvels of engineering amazingness: they're cheap, mass-produced products. Just off the top I'd be willing to bet that all of them use the exact same chipset, which does all the work anyway, and the products are different mostly in packaging and branding.
>
>    


You're right in that repect. There are only a couple of vendors selling 
usb-2.0 chipsets. Almost all usb-2.0 devices use the same chipsets. They 
are produced in Taiwan but most likely are actually produced in mainland 
China or perhaps even North Korea where labour is effectively free and 
labelled as Chinese origin.

Like you said there is very little market for a device that is targeted 
at Linux Audio users. Instead of worrying about it for the present you 
are better off continuing to produce excellent examples of work you have 
created on your existing Linux based system/s and inspire more people to 
move away from the proprietary software world.

Getting in touch with one of the vendors of 2.0 or 3.0 devices and 
offering your assistance for a nominal fee may get their attention. If 
you offer to develop the drivers for free then maybe they will be 
interested in assisting with specs adn even a device for testing 
although don't count on it.

When I bought the maudio quattro in early 2002 it was completely 
unsupported. I was prepared to write the driver myself as a learning 
experience but I was lucky because Takashi Iwai decided to bite the 
bullet and write the first usb audio driver and then Clemens Ladisch was 
spectacularly productive and helpful in further developing the driver. 
The Quattro has many undocumented quirks that we eventually uncovered 
but it took almost two years of testing and debugging to figure it all out.






Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd




>> PCCards are usually limited to one per laptop.
>>
>> Firewire is the only thing where you can have high number of channels and even
>> more then one device on one connection. And work for supporting almost all
>> devices except for Motu is quite advanced thanks to support from the vendors.
>>
>> The only alternative for higher channel counts is a pci(-express) device from
>> rme. And these don't work with laptops...
>>
>> Have fun,
>>
>> Arnold
>>      
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