31 Mar
2008
31 Mar
'08
6:42 a.m.
sevol wrote:
Sorry, I was thinking out loud. S/PDIF - even FFADO - is beside the
point re my pod. The sync light glow's blue, never changes & syncs to
nothing. Use to sync up every 10th or 50th power cycle & stay a while,
but those days are gone. As an interface it's worthless.
Perhaps it's just as well, my knowledge of linux is straight up flimzy.
The only thing I 1/2-way understand is the pod problem. As far as I can tell, the
firepod should work with FFADO (although not
vendor supported). But if I remember correctly you said that it also
doesn't work on windows. Linux is great, but don't expect miraculous
hardware repairs from it...
Greets,
Pieter
Pieter Palmers wrote:
All devices that are currently vendor supported have approximately the
same level of functionality in FFADO, which basically comes down to
"everything from other OS's except onboard DSP and maybe some consumer
features (most notably AC3 passthrough)".
sevol wrote:
Excellent! This is great news & really better than hoped, even counting
Focurite's full support. I'll take this chance & congradulate you early
on these non-GMO babies, whatever the due date :) Hope the Mackie, Echo,
& other vendor supported stuff is working out too. Pieter Palmers wrote:
All input/output gain controls and
configuration switches that are
provided by the saffire control panel on other OS'es are supported in
the FFADO codebase. We have control panels for all of the Saffire
devices, and they are fully featured (except for the DSP stuff on the
saffire white). There might be some bugs in them, but we have all info
to fix them. The only thing you shouldn't expect is a fancy GUI... it's
all very basic PyQT rapid prototyping stuff, but it works. If someone
wants to tackle the GUI side of things, please do. The current prototype
gui's illustrate how to use the control interface.
sevol wrote:
> Hi People,
>
> I'm thinking of getting one of the Saffire audio interfaces from
> Focusrite. Anyone on the list using these units & happy with the
> results? This, a little off-topic & subjective: happy with the pres
> & conversion?
>
> The SaffireLE,
>
> http://www.focusrite.com/products/saffire/saffire_le/
>
> , is the one I'm eyeing. As far as I can tell it's very similar to
> the Saffire,
>
> http://www.focusrite.com/products/saffire/saffire/
>
> , only with 6 in/8 out compared to 4 in/10 out, & minus the
> hardwar-powered plug-ins. I like having 2 more ins, & wont miss 2
> less outs. & I imagined the plug-ins, ahreware-powered or software
> woulkd be useless under Linux. But the recent thread on the M-Audio
> Profire 2626 leads me to believe, maybe the times are changing.
I personally think times are changing, but change is slow...
> I'm curious whether the DSP plugins might work in linux with FFADO.
> Actually, true functionality of any of these models seem to require
> software to adjust settings, so, what limitations are people
> noticing right now running these in Linux? & will the pending beta
> release of FFADO address the Saffire plug-in Suite hardware-powered
> use & whatever other issues there are, if there are? Or is this a
> Wine solution?
As things stand now, there are no plans to support the saffire's
internal plugins. And if I do support for any (hardware or software)
plugins related to these devices, I'll do whatever I can to make them
native instead of WINE.
I'm not really disappointed - hadn't given the DSP
stuff much chance
of use atm. If/When the time comes, native has got to be better.
Somehow the plugins thing hijacked my thoughts. In fact, certain other
issues seem more critical & pressing. Like, the front on the LE has 4
nice knobs: 2 level controls for frontside inputs 1 & 2; 1 for levels
of backside Main outs 1 & 2; & 1 for headphone levels. That seems to
leave a lot of input & output control unaccounted for, except via the
Saffire Control LE software GUI.
& this would be a no-show in Linux, right? I guess the 2 analogue
line/instrument-in levels on back can be controllrd by, if existant,
volume knobs on whatever devices are connecting to them. So, maybe
that's covered. & sample rates will probably be handled by JACK/JACKCTRL.
Then though, the MIDI Through is activated by a software switch. & the
High Gain switches for Instrument level sources is software
controlled. The S/PDIF external sync switch, likewise, & the same
situation as the nonworking S/PDIF input of the Firepod. A lot of the
output & mixing capabilities are based in software too. Is there going
to be a way to manage these? Full details not necessary, but could you
reveal the gist of what'll be lost?
p.s. Just read Andrew's message on the Freebob-devel list & see that
the S/PDIF capabilities are looking better, at least with FFADO
testing on the firepod. Hmmm...
S/PDIF on the firepod should work when using
FFADO. You can even install
FFADO only for it's device control capabilities (clock source, mixer
settings) and then run jack with the freebob backend for stable streaming.