Re: [linux-audio-user] usb-Firewire-mLAN

On Fri, 2005-08-05 at 08:05 +0300, Mehmet Okonsar wrote: mLan is not an open standard at this point in time. Yamaha have continued to refuse to make available the information required for an open source implementation, even though they say they will. there are 2 parts to mLan: a wire protocol for moving audio+MIDI around, which was "extracted" from mLan and turned into an IEC standard (IEC61883 IIRC), and the connection management part (how devices know what other devices exist). this part has not been converted into a standard and is not available from yamaha as mentioned. as far as ieee1394 devices go, linux is on the edge of a transition there. there are basically two classes of ieee1394 devices, those based on the "bebob" chipset and those that are not. many, many ieee1394 devices use this chipset, and it has many nice features. there is work going on to create linux drivers for this chipset, which once working will allow any linux app to support any device based on this chipset (you can also chain devices to increase channel counts). the stuff is far enough along that JACK does actually work, and hence ardour/rosegarden/muse etc. will run too, but its not ready for "regular users" to play with. note that the work is being done in part by people from the company that makes the chipset. bebob ("freebob" on linux) has fed back some changes to IEC61883 to improve it, and has its own connection management scheme which they have suggested as an extension or additional standard. it is *not* compatible with mLan, but at this time, there are many more devices using it than use mLan. IMHO, Yamaha seriously, seriously goofed here when they failed to learn the lessons from the success of the MIDI standard. They tried to keep it as a controlled, proprietary or semi-proprietary standard this time, and had a dismal outcome as a result. there are also devices like the RME fireface which use their own protocol(s), and are incompatible with any generic driver. whether this is worth whatever improvements the manufacturers claim it provides is for you to decide. the fireface will not be supported on linux because RME refuses to provide the information required to write an open source driver (and they will not write a closed source one themselves). --p