[LAU] Statement from RME regarding to Linux

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 09:20 -0500, Brett McCoy wrote:
> Anyway, the point is a lot of companies won't provide support for
> Linux but will just send people here :-)

That's what makes me a little bit indignant about RME. Thank you for
buying our card, if you need help visit an ALSA forum, OWTTE translated
[1]. They've got a Linux forum, that implies that RME can be used with
Linux, especially if they keep claims that something is working. Yes
many cards are working and even my card does work, it's simply not
working if I need more than a simple stereo card.

On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 15:19 +0100, Lorenzo Sutton wrote:
> And when I say this to many fellow 'linuxers', they insist on the fact
> that hardware on linux and especially audio *isn't* a problem any
> more. 
> Go figure.

I don't understand Alexandre's "not looking for offences?". Are
customers today supplicants? Is it offence to ask for support?

I also got friendly answers from RME. e.g. that ADAT sync is ok, offset
is normal, it's just that different converters will have an offset
comparable to some cm different microphone position, users don't need to
be aware of this. Using word clock won't improve the sync.
I disagree, I need to be aware of the offset, to avoid bad phases,
however, the friendly reply regarding to bad latency and unusable IOs is
to ask the Linux community.

"Hardware" isn't a problem insofar as there are many cards known as
working with Linux. Some do have a less good audio quality, others are
outdated because they are for PCI only, others are to expensive cards
for my purse. The HDSPe AIO has very good audio quality and is less
expensive and I did much research before I decided to order this card.

For other OSs there are other not to expensive high quality cards
available that can't be used with Linux.

In the past I very often send so called Linux compatible equipment back
to the dealer and I got my money back. In this case I planed to do the
same, unfortunately it was my failure not to test the card completely,
directly after it was delivered.

The problem is, that just listening to a production, it's really
impossible to hear a difference between my elCheapo TerraTec Envy24
cards and the RME card. You hear the difference, if you try to master a
production yourself, when it becomes easier to do the mastering,
something seems to be more accurate for one card than for the other.

So when looking for a new card IMO some recommendation is needed, just
listening to cards that do work with Linux, to hear if the sound is ok,
won't help. Reading advertisings, won't help. Gerald Albright, played
Saxophone for Quincy Jones uses M-Audio ... ;). Nice, he isn't "the"
producer of Quincy Jones.

[1]
"[...] Hilfe findet sich ggf. in ALSA-Foren oder auch in der
Linux-Abteilung unseres eigenen Forums (rme-audio.de/forum) [...]"