Thank you very much, that seems to come up to my expectations ! I take advantage of this thread to explain my thoughts. I was thinking about, for instance, an electric guitar with a built-in ADC, that could be plugged in a computer via a USB (or Firewire) cable, the guitar being recognized as a 'snd-usb-audio' device under the system. With this view in mind, it might be useful to get many "digital" instruments like that, as well as a DAC, all available in a single JACK server. Will JACK2 be able to handle this ? I mean, you run jack2_start, and all the available (and desired) peripherals appear in the connections. :) I suppose that it raises many issues like synchronization between different physical peripherals. Handling many peripherals as separated devices might not be optimal compared to one single device with multiple inputs/outputs, as well. And actually I am not sure this idea is really essential... :) That was just a view of a weird future where several people plug all their USB guitar directly into a single computer, and do not even need to make use of a guitar amp. What a wonderful future of digital music I am painting here ! Forget it ! :D Adrien On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 4:01 PM, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:01 PM, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote: well somebody uses good quality cards you see ;) http://www.io-sound.org/Guitars/Sahira/Sahira.html -- .wmv , .wma , .pps along with all proprietary Windows formats won t be accepted and/or viewed....

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Arnold Krille <arnold(a)arnoldarts.de> wrote: I am aware of these sync issues and I mentioned that in my second post, however I read somewhere that it is possible to do this in software with, as you said, some uncertainty. Of course, I voluntarily left apart hardware sync, since it concerns expensive soundcards. Anyway, in my opinion, the idea to provide a *high quality* guitar (including a *high quality* ADC) that you could easily plug into your computer to play music on a conventionnal hi-fi system is not so odd, commercially speaking. Keeping this in mind, I was simply wondering the extent to which it was possible to generalize this to several instruments (especially in JACK), again because it does not require any additional sound device or guitar amp. Thanks for the answers. Adrien

Nick and Arnold, Ok, so as you say jitter is too much important to use the solution given by Paul to my first post : using two different soundcards as input and output. Hence it is not possible, as I thought, to use the built-in (often low-quality and noisy, though) soundcard of a laptop computer, for example, as output. Ok, thank you. I precise that it was just an interrogation (about a potential commercial use), I personally use a single soundcard in full-duplex for my guitar. So, the solution would be a bit more complicated, but resembles what I proposed in my second post with USB : Firewire ADC for each instrument, and a Firewire DAC, such that everyone is kept synchronized. And I suppose that the number of Firewire ADC is also very limited by the number of Firewire busses. Thanks, Adrien

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:12:24 -0400 Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote: I second this. I really don't see the need or even usefulness for a guitar to have a Firewire, USB or Ethernet port, and I'd hate like hell to have my guitar run into driver issues witn my computer system! Getting a guitar to have an output level suitable for plugging into a soundcard (especially one like my Delta 1010 with the -4/+10 dB input switch) is a trivial thing. Getting a 1010, or something like a Focusrite Saffire to handle the A/D conversion on a number of inputs is a lot less complicated, and ultimately I'd think less expensive, than a number of smaller separate units. -- ====================================================================== Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh(a)brainiac.com Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 10:28:04AM +0700, Patrick Shirkey wrote: The only way I can see to be comfortable with it is by not being informed of the problems and limitations of such an approach. You can probably sell it to the ignorant if you get the marketing right. Trying to use a collection of (low-quality) interfaces, each of them having its own sample frequency and expecting the software to resample and realign everything without introducing significant latency to me looks like trying to transport a concert piano on top of four Cooper Minis. For the rock band addicts, a single 4 or 8 input soundcard (or mixer with computer interface) will be cheaper than the same number of single channel USB devices, and perform much much better. Ciao, -- FA Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica Parma, Italia O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !

Am Freitag, 1. August 2008 schrieb Adrien DANIEL: wrote: Well, the good-quality converters with firewire interface usually come in 19" units... You could actually try to fit one of those evaluation-platforms into a guitar. But don't expect the guitar sells to skyrocket anytime soon. Especially if your brand-name is new. And most (all?) good guitarists do half of the sound with the amp and speaker. If they spend hours turning knobs (or even soldering their own tube-amps like a friend of mine does), they won't want their guitar to be recorded right after the pick-up. And as a hobby-recording engineer I have to say that an electric guitar _has_ to be miked at the amp. And in the studio you also _have_ to mike acoustics. The plugins of acoustic guitars are really good for on-stage. But they really suck compared to a good (tube-)condensor in studio with a nice room, some distance and right placement. So apart from guitar/bass which instruments do you want to supply with an inbuilt converter and interface? Keys? They (should) have optical or otherwise digital outputs already. And using an external adc usually means going from digital to analog to digital again. This only makes sense if you add a leslie with microphones in between. I do understand your idea of having the sound digital all the way. The problem is that a) sound is acoustic for most instruments and b) you will need some kind of network to synchronize the devices. And there it gets ugly. I can already see guitarists destroying their guitar on stage because the digital stuff lost sync _again_... Not only seems this idea like transporting a concert piano on a couple of Cooper Minis, but it also means attaching the piano to the minis by pulling ropes through the strings of the piano. Arnold -- visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/ --- Hi, I am a .signature virus. Please copy me into your ~/.signature and send me to all your contacts. After a month or so log in as root and do a "rm -rf /". Or ask your administrator to do so...

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 11:10:33AM +0200, Adrien DANIEL wrote: Given the shape of a piano, you only need three Minis. Ciao, -- FA Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica Parma, Italia O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !

Am Freitag, 1. August 2008 schrieb Fernando Lopez-Lezcano: If one of the three carrying minis breaks down? Better add a fifth one. You also need to transport the pianists seat. ;-) Arnold -- visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/ --- Hi, I am a .signature virus. Please copy me into your ~/.signature and send me to all your contacts. After a month or so log in as root and do a "rm -rf /". Or ask your administrator to do so...