[LAU] [LAD] FOSS Ethernet Soundcard

[Ken Restivo]

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.

-ken