[LAU] Help finding parts for building a hardware system

[Joshua Boyd]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 06:29:06PM -0700, Niels Mayer wrote:
> 
> PS: I want my next soundcard to be a gigabit ethernet port.  Seriously
> -- what's the point of firewire, USB etc when we have gigabit ethernet
> and we can use that to hookup audio gear with cheap ethernet-to-RCA
> dongles anywhere you need a pair of audio channels..  i know ... crazy
> idea using an old standard that's been used for decades for delivery
> of realtime information, guaranteed quality of service connections,
> etc.

I just am not sure where you are getting that gig-e is an old standard
that's been used for decades to deliver realtime information with
guaranteed quality of service connections.

If you see GigE doing that, it is probably because it is in controlled
circumstances, or the application has large enough tolerances, and still
some luck may be involved. 

It isn't a terrible idea, but I think it would only be really reliable
if you used a dedicated gige port and spoke raw ethernet instead of
tcp/ip.

Still, a fast E device that plays 8 or 16 channels may be quiet
reasonable, and under the right circumstances both reliable and easier
to build than a USB2 device.
 
> PPS: likewise, i want my next MIDI port to be an ethernet port with
> some MIDI jacks that talks ipMIDI and then use
> http://qmidinet.sourceforge.net to talk to your ethernet-connected
> midi devices via alsa).

Sounds like it is time for someone to get a MCU ethernet dev board...