[LAD] FFADO 2.0 Release Candidate 2 (1.999.42) available

Dear, The FFADO team is happy to announce the release of the second release candidate for FFADO 2.0. It has been 6 months since we released FFADO 2.0 Release Candidate 1, and we have to admit that this is quite long. The usage statistics show that about 300 people have been using RC1 in this period, and the good news is that we did not get a lot of bug reports. Most of the reports filed were related to crappy host controller hardware (most notably the Ricoh controllers), which is something we unfortunately cannot fix. In the mean time the remaining bug reports have been fixed, so here we are again. This release candidate contains a few reliability improvements and bugfixes that should get some field testing before we can release the official 2.0. I would therefore like to ask all users and packagers to upgrade as soon as possible such that we can release sooner rather than later. If we get to about 100 registered users without significant significant bug reports I feel confident that we're good to go. So happy testing! To indicate that we're quite busy even though we don't put out a lot of announcements let me give you a sneak preview of what is under development for post-2.0 ... First of all 2.1 will contain support for extra devices: * The first device to take full advantage of our DICE platform support will be the Focusrite Saffire PRO40. The platform based audio and MIDI streaming is fully functional. The custom mixer functionality is currently being alpha-tested. * The DICE platform support also enables the basic use of the TC Electronic Konnekt 8, 24D and Live. Support for these devices is limited to streaming (no DSP effects). Currently it doesn't look like the DSP is going to be supported any time soon. * Support for the Behringer FCA-202 has been added. * Support for the Stanton SCS.1 series is added. Support for both the audio I/O as the HSS1394 control surface protocol has been implemented, meaning that these devices are fully functional. We keep on talking to several device vendors to increase our device support, and we will most likely be announcing some new devices in the near future. The second major development is the move of the streaming infrastructure to kernel space. Thanks to the Google Summer of Code and the Linux Foundation, we have somebody working on this during the summer. A kernel-space implementation will bring significant improvements with respect to reliability and efficiency. Furthermore it will expose an ALSA interface, meaning that the scope of FireWire audio is extended significantly. The following changes have been made: * Various packaging improvements and cosmetic fixes. * Improved the Edirol FA101 mixer * While the streaming engine is running, prevent mixer changes that result in aborted streaming * Add status bar logging to the mixer window * Install a service-file if possible * Add command rate control for the Saffire devices to reduce the issues with mixer actions messing up audio. * Fix Terratec Phase88 mixer * Implement mixer support for the MOTU UltraLite * Improve mixer support for the MOTU 896HD * Add a minimum for the packetsize parameter for very low channel-count devices * Fix handling of MIDI 2x and 3x mode * Improve the jitter performance of the timestamping * Reduce CPU usage * Fix the bug that prevented jackd from exiting freewheeling mode * Introduce transmit prebuffering to increase reliability with small period sizes * MOTU: Fix bug related to disabled (unused) audio channels * Introduce support for driver parameters in the config file * Ensure that the order specified in the specification string when aggregating devices is honored. * Ensure that libffado.so is properly versioned (SONAME) and installed * Add a firmware version check for ECHO Fireworks based devices * Add a firmware version check for Terratec Phase88 devices * By default the library is compiled with debugging turned off More information can be found here: http://www.ffado.org/?q=node/1031 For the eager, a direct download link: http://www.ffado.org/files/libffado-2.0-rc2.tar.gz On behalf of the FFADO team, Pieter Palmers