15 Feb
2009
15 Feb
'09
6:41 a.m.
pete shorthose wrote:
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:19:53 +0000
pete shorthose <zenadsl6252(a)zen.co.uk> wrote:
You can connect a second Helix and double your channel count.
Theoretically you should be able to connect any other FFADO supported
firewire audio device and use them as one combined device...
Unfortunately reality is a bit different and hence YMMV. But in general
this works for identical devices, and for devices based upon the same
chipset.
Greets,
Pieter
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:26:03 -0000
"Simon W. Fielding" <s.fielding(a)wmcce.org> wrote:
Ok, a small udpate on my experience with ffado, the hb 12MKII and my dell inspiron 9400.
..the abridged version:
argh.. xrun xrun.. nooo xrun xrun.. remove dvd drive.. xrun xrun.. remove wireless and
disable
ethernet... xrun.. try every other damn thing that people suggested.. xrun xrun..
eventually discover that i8k.ko and thermal.ko cause cpu spikes.. remove them.. oh look,
rock solid RT performance with -r 96000 -p 256 -n 2 and 6.6% reported cpu usage when
idle
(no connections).
And they all skipped off into the woods to live noisily ever after.
The moral of the story.. DON'T buy an expresscard firewire interface until you have
exhausted all possibilities. Damn it. (probably wouldn't have helped anyway)
Note that I put everything back as it was. It was only the thermal and i8k (dell
fan/temp) module
that seem to have caused problems. also for google reference:
pete@one:~$ lspci -nn|grep -i firewire
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
[1180:0832]
Incidentally, does anyone know why this thing (the phonic) has 2 firewire ports on it?
> All of which indicates that I would see
similar results on my system unless there is some kind of
> bug or problem that only affects you. In effect, you are seeing >1000% penalty
for the use of firewire.
> Which is pretty horrific.
I guess that appears to be the case - unless
someone more expert has any better opinions.
Ok well all the information is
pointing one way.. the dell may not be able to use this nor in in fact any
firewire audio device and the firewire setup on linux seems to be extremely inefficient
going by the
information available. As such I decided the only thing to do was to ignore it all and
buy one anyway. =]
I'll jump in the pit with it and go a few rounds. If I don't get anywhere
I'll sell it on or use it on windows.
I'll report back with any linux related results (ie not bad dell hardware problems
which are outside the
scope of this list really). It should arrive in a couple of days.