On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 02:14:11AM +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: Suck. I guess I won't buy one then. Sigh. Why do companies suck so much?

I forgot, this is the product i'm talking about: http://www.rme-audio.de/firewire/ff800.htm Marek

On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 00:49, Frank Barknecht wrote: Open source, me = alsa only. :) Marek

On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 11:20 +1100, Dan Harper wrote: I'm thinking - if someone could put together (and maintain! that's the hard part) a simple web page, containing just one table with four columns: 1. Manufacturers of sound cards supported by Linux 2. Feed-back addresses and contacts for said manufacturers 3. Manufacturers of sound cards not supported by Linux (well, at least the major players, there's no point in listing every single microscopic company) 4. Feed-back addresses and contacts of said manufacturers Then, whenever a Linux user buys a card supported by Linux, it would be very simple to send a thank you to the respective manufacturer ("hey guys, i'm buying this card because it's supported by Linux, thanks") and send a f*** you to all manufacturers in column #3 ("hey guys, i bought a card made by XYZ instead of you, because your cards are not supported by Linux, no thanks"). Put that page on a prominent Linux multimedia site, advertise it and encourage everyone to use it. If thousands of people do that, i betcha we will see some changes. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/

R Parker wrote: I kind of got the impression that the annoucement was just pertaining to RME *Firewire* audio interfaces. Are they stopping Linux driver support for all of their products? Rick B

since complaining about this at the rme support i got the following response: a short translation: currently there is no firewire audio support in alsa. a lot of the firewire technology for windows has been their development. it's not that they generally stop linux support... cheers ... tim -- mailto:TimBlechmann@gmx.de ICQ: 96771783 http://www.mokabar.tk After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager." William S. Burroughs

Hallo, Tim Blechmann hat gesagt: // Tim Blechmann wrote: And to translate the missing, but IMO important part "With an OS-ALSA-dirver or the needed hardware documentation we would support our competitors in several ways. Please understand, that this cannot be in our interest." So basically they want to protect their investment in getting knowledge of how to implement a powerful firewire interface from the eyes of other hardware manufacturers. It's a pity, of course, but also somehow understandable. It's still good that they were and are supportive regarding their PCI cards. This is different from a company like NVidia, which not only hides docs for their competitive 3D-cards, but also docs about network adapters and onboard soundchips. So with NVidia it's a company philosophy to not talk to open source developers at all, with RME it's just restricted to their new FW box. (Usual plug: People should stop buying NVidia stuff, but not RME cards.) Well, lets just hope, Freebob is successful, as this will generate a nice kind of pressure in the FW world in general, to which RME might bow later, too. ;) Morale of story: Always buy old hardware of about one year ago at least. Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__

On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 04:22 -0500, Rick B wrote: That's what i thought. "RME is no more" seems a bit exagerated (although i feel for the person who bought the card thinking it's supported by the Linux drivers). Anyway, beyond Linux support tribulations, the RME Fireface is a great card. I just read a review in the international Dec 2004 edition of Sound On Sound - it's really cool. It has all the things that i wish the Multiface had. Just one detail: you do the changes using the software, apply the changes to the card, and all settings are stored in the local flash memory - from then on, it will work stand-alone using that particular configuration. That's way cool. Sadly, if there's no support for Linux, i guess i won't buy it. It's not like the world ends with RME or anything. -- Florin Andrei http://florin.myip.org/

On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 20:50, Florin Andrei wrote: Consider that they have released some specs for their HDSP hammerfall series, which uses a *proprietary* firewire protocol and that their latest PC products were based on IEEE1394 except one or two PCI based cards. I don't think it's exagerated, see explanation above. I knew exactly it wasn't at the time i bought it, i just took it for granted. I talked to Thomas Charbonnel back in april at the ZKM and it seemed that they were positive about alsa support for fireface. I can only agree with that. But that's even worse for us then. ;) Well it's close to such situation in the linux pro-audio world. The two major players in pro-audio hw market that supported ALSA development if only indirectly by providing specs, were m-audio and... rme. Have a look at the ALSA matrix, it's a pretty sad situation. The only *real* hw manufacturer in my eyes is audioscience, they provide their own ALSA drivers(that's how it should be) but produce only broadcast cards. Marek

that's not a point, since from the driver point of view, the hdsp is an ordinary pci device ... so they probably didn't release their firefire protocol ... tim -- mailto:TimBlechmann@gmx.de ICQ: 96771783 http://www.mokabar.tk After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager." William S. Burroughs

that's not a point, since from the driver point of view, the hdsp is an ordinary pci device ... so they probably didn't unclose their firewire protocol ... tim -- mailto:TimBlechmann@gmx.de ICQ: 96771783 http://www.mokabar.tk After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager." William S. Burroughs

Please, let's not be too harsh. I recently bought the pcmcia based multiface from RME, only because it has linux support, and it works great, on both kernels. Of course, firewire is cooler, but there is this way out. Glad that I didn't wait, at least. Firewire needs more time to be more legacy, hopefully not too long :) Regards, Georg.

Well for once I am glad to have invested in less the cutting edge hardware, However still trying to figure out how to get my RME Multi-face to work on my system.... On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 10:58:42 -0800, Florin Andrei <florin(a)andrei.myip.org> wrote: -- "When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly." --Dr. Edward Teller

what about creating a wiki website to submit "soundcard experiences"? I think it would be a good idea, http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc is a good page to see if your hardware is supported (I suppose evrybody uses alsa) but I would like also to know user opinions of each card: What I want to say is that one card can be supported by alsa but the whole setup is easier for some ones and in some cards there are more useful utilities around the driver than in other ones. This should be posted somewhere. On the other hand we could also post our "most used jackd configurations" for each card, concrete issues to install more functionalities for the card (for instance, the soundfonts for the audigy), we could sum up there the usual messages asking for soundcard advice in the LAU, we could show the manufacturers how many people are interested on having a linux driver in some cards (just to help them set priorities), etc. At least, this could be useful for the current RME discussion... I don't have the time to mantain a static site (anybody has it, I think), but it seems to me that a Wiki could be maintained by little contributions of all of us. any suggestions about where to put this wiki? maybe at agnula.org? linuxdj.com? what do you think about all this? En/na Marek Peteraj ha escrit:

James Would you care to help with this project. Considering your experience with PHP and MySQL and Wiki? We are attempting to build a database of sound card issues and compatiblity and in general track what is in use out there OS, Hardware, etc.. It would encompass MacOS/X and Linux and what the heck BSD users and Pro/Semi-Professional audio applications. David On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:43:42 +0100, Marek Peteraj <marpet(a)naex.sk> wrote: -- "When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly." --Dr. Edward Teller

Hi David, --- David Stephens <linuxrootuser(a)gmail.com> wrote: It might be hard for me to be objective because I've been using Linux for a fair amount of time. Have you done a Planet CCRMA install? Fernando is providing an extremely effortless installation with most of our favorite applications. I suspect that any audio card listed and marked as supported in the Alsa matrix will be up and running without having to deal with driver issues. I'm a musician/engineer and don't have the time or patience for installation issues. During the first couple years I didn't mind doing admin work but thankfully no longer have to deal with it. ron __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo

On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 02:14 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: Meh. So we all go buy M-Audio Firewire interfaces. Looks like they will have the first supported firewire gear. I am sure RME knows this and did the math. The system works. Lee

We've seen some arguments for and against opening drivers. I'd like to point out that ESR has written about this as an afterword to his essay "The Magic Cauldron", which you can read here: Afterword: Why Closing a Driver Loses Its Vendor Money http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/ar01s18.h… FWIW. -- De gustibus non disputandum est.

Now that there is a skeleton of a page where everybody should be able put their experiences about their cards (see my post: [linux-audio-user] sound card linux documentation wiki+forum site), I think that these pages will be visited (I hope...) by the owners of these cards, so adding there some kind of "optional form managed with php and mysql to be completed by the users" could help to do this survey to measure how big the linux audio market is. is there any volunteer out there? En/na David Stephens ha escrit:

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 12:03:40 +0100, Esben Stien <executiv(a)online.no> wrote: Socialism - it ain't pretty...

On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 16:55, Jan Depner wrote: Guys, i'm sorry to say that, but you have no clue what you are talking about. ;) The true meaning of socialism or communism has nothing to do with what happened to the former communist states in europe after WW2. A political system which was first deceitfully and then violently pursued and resulted in an economic environment based upon state monopoly and shared a lot of similarities with monarchies. And it's more similar to monopoly capitalism than you might think. (see TCPA and recent DRM activities, BSA allowing people to denounce others on their website in case they find out that they're using illegal software, intimidating with "beware, you can be the next one, we see what you're doing" campaigns, it's *dangerously* close) What Esben described is not only a typical open source society. It has always been beneficial when large companies joined efforts in creating technology standards. Of course, a standard is not always a result of cooperation. Cooperation isn't what determined the kind of socialism we were used to in former communist countries. There was no real cooperation happening. It's the way the ideas were enforced(mostly) upon people or encouraged(remainder, propaganda). Marek

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:55:05 -0600, Jan Depner <eviltwin69(a)cableone.net> wrote: Groucho was a genius. Not so sure about Karl. Of course, I should have added that he has a right to his opinion, but so do I. I believe in patents, intellectual property, and the right of a corporation to deceptively market products to me in an attempt to get my money. I do not believe companies owe me anything, whether I've given them money or not, and Santa Claus. Cheers, Mark

On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 19:57, Mark Knecht wrote: as long as they are true inventions and not software patents... The question of authorship as a moral right has become redundant in US copyright law. In the open source world, it has to some extent regained its position. I believe in authorship as a #1 right. Agressive marketing does not always mean deceptive. If so, then yes. Typical customer-corporation relationship. Marek

the basic, underlying flaw with capitalism and the "free" market is that it cannot sustain itself - we will start to see this more and more as governments privatise more and more social services and utilities ... after all, there is only so much you can charge for, say, the price of a phone call ... and once you've hit the ceiling of how much you can charge, then there's only so far you can cut back your services .... actually, someone should tell this to tesltra ... i love it when these lists get woefully off-topic :)

Dave Phillips wrote: GReat big democratic ditto's to this!!!!! Enuf already...sheesh!

On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 12:57, Mark Knecht wrote: Personally, I prefer the Ritz Brothers. Wait... what about Santa Claus? Jan

Last Sunday 12 December 2004 22:44, Marek Peteraj was like: A truism is something too obviously true, cliched or which repeats itself in the making. Five years ago I'd have stared at you open mouthed if you'd told me any of those things were possible. You misunderstood my point completely. nevermind tim hall http://glastonburymusic.org.uk

Mark Knecht <markknecht(a)gmail.com> writes: Oh, please, spear me. Am I a socialist because I put cooperation between people higher than money?. That's really low, kid. I think you might be too quick throwing labels at people. A mentality to keep money above everything else is not really a good society to live in if you think about it for a second. Be real. Does it mean I'm a socialist because I view things this way, not at all. -- Esben Stien is b0ef(a)esben-stien.name http://www.esben-stien.name irc://irc.esben-stien.name/%23contact [sip|iax]:b0ef@esben-stien.name

I would like to thank everybody for the excellent Marx brothers' and Spinal Tap references in this thread. -Joe D On Mon, 2004-12-13 at 07:18, tim hall wrote:

On Tuesday 14 December 2004 12:31 am, Lee Revell wrote: "Cooperation" like "open source"? What would happen if you didn't have "bills to pay"? -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

On Sunday 12 December 2004 03:16 pm, Dave Phillips wrote: And I missed it... ...Drag. The free market hardly has problems sustaining itself. Individuals may have problems sustaining themselves in the free market. The concept applies pretty directly to linux and open source. -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

Lee Revell wrote: Interestingly some people seem to be existing who are working on Linux for fun. Also there is a concept known as "Open Source Hardware" which was mentioned here before. Cheers, Andreas

Last Tuesday 14 December 2004 09:03, Andreas Kuckartz was like: Thanks Andreas, Well put. cheers tim hall http://glastonburymusic.org.uk

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:33:24 +0000, tim hall <tech(a)glastonburymusic.org.uk> wrote: yes. Technically, no. We pay them because it's the law. If there was any other reason we'd decend into a discussion about how much tax to pay to coopretively provide the services that matter to each of us and the system wouldn't work. We elect officials to make decisions about how much tax and what to spend it on. Unless you are speaking of a govenment run (communist) program here how can goods and services EVER be provided without market forces promoting them? Even Marek's plea, down underneath, pines for a market driven force to stop buying anything from RME unless they bend to the will of this collective group. Not sure I am involved (you were speaking to Lee who clearly is) but my reasons are: 1) It's free 2) Lists like this are fun. Well said and fair enough. Now, what do we do? Just because they are not releasing this information does not mean it's being done out of 'greed'. AFAICT it wasn't until Paul and I wrote our posts that we were even able to draw RME into a discussion about why they might think it's not in their best interests to release this info. My thought is that we need to study these responses, and maybe study the structure of RME, and then formulate a strategy to get them to reevaluate this decision. (Should that be of interest to more then 3-5 people. I cannot speak to this. Probably history will at some future date when none of us are hear to read about it. Clearly. Cheers, Mark

On Tue, 2004-12-14 at 18:12, Mark Knecht wrote: *Nobody* is telling them to GIVE AWAY hardware. No. Do you *really* think that people are here because they want beer for free? They could happily use pirated software for instance. Could you please show me the country where people get everything for free? Marek

On Tue, 2004-12-14 at 09:46 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote: Exactly. Please don't make assumptions about my politics just because I believe it's RME's right to sell their hardware under whatever terms they see fit. Many of you seem to have jumped to the incorrect conclusion that I'm some kind of right winger. I am not going to respond to them, I just want to say I agree that the people blathering on about politics are way OT, and please don't lump me in with them. Anyway there are thousands of sourceforge mailing lists you can be on if you want nothing but hard technical stuff. IMO anything that LAUs feel like talking about is ontopic here. Lee

On 14 Dec 2004 20:55:09 +0100, Andreas Kuckartz <A.Kuckartz(a)ping.de> wrote: Andreas, Thank you very much. This is very interesting to me. The Dec. 8th post was a good read. I'll be using this as a 1st model for how to approach this potential task. - Mark

On Sunday 12 December 2004 04:44 pm, Marek Peteraj wrote: I believe in personal choice. -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

On 15 Dec 2004 10:29:38 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote: Fernando, I believe this is (more or less) completely possible. Let's use two of the recently maligned RME's products as an example - the HDSP 9652 and the Hammerfall Light. (Hey - imagine that?! I chose the two cards I own!) ;-) Both of these cards use Xilinx FPGAs. Both require firmware be loaded at boot time to turn the general purpose Xilinx chip into a sound card, but once the firmware is loaded the chip, for all intents and purposes, becomes just like a hard wired gate array. On both of these cards there is no analog at all. It's just the Xilinx chip acting as the PCI interface and all of the sound card logic. The other side of the Xilinx chip goes to some off the shelf line drivers to create the ADAT and s/pdif interfaces. Personally I don't think it would be very expensive to do a card like this, but it does require the user to have external D/A and A/D units that meet their needs. I like this idea since it means people can buy what they want - from M-Audio to Apogee and higher - and get the quality they pay for. It's not the lowest cost solution, but it covers the widest range of qualities. Using digital interfaces also allows these cards to serve as data transport between machine. Again, using my home studio as an example, I have the HDSP 9652 in the center as a hub on a machine that now runs Ardour. Ardour and other apps get all the internal HDSP 9652 outputs. The 3 ADAT interfaces go to: 1) A Windows box running Reaktor/GigaStudio/Battery/Acid Pro 2) A Windows box running Pro Tools 3) An external 8-port D/A/A/D to hook up other sources I get 8 channels between each of these boxes, all digital, all synced together over ADAT. It works nicely. I currently don't use s/pdif for much, but I'd probably get a really good D/A and place my main output there in the future. (I currently use the 002 Rack's D/A when running Ardour. Cool, 'eh?) ;-) With the price of Xilinx chips coming down all the time, and with functionality going up, I see a small card with one large FPGA, a small eeprom to enable a PCI enterface in the chip, and some transceivers for ADAT and/or s/pdif. I am just guessing that even in small volumes this can probably be built for under $300/card. (That's a total guess.) The nice thing about this, in my mind, is that when Xilinx comes out with each new generation you can imagine putting a bigger Xilinx chip on the same card and programming more interesting things, like hardware mixers. This is rally all RME did between the Hammerfall and HDSP line. (I'm being purposely simplistic here.) There are certainly HUGE challenges for a group of folks like us doing this. Verilog (or VHDL) design, which I don't do, compiling that code into something that programs the Xilinx chips (Symplicity?) assembly, testing, etc., but none of it is unsurmountable. It just takes some vision and, unfortunately, some money unless we can get access to some Open Source tools or, possibly, commercial tools through some friendly company. Doing this as a 1394-based external unit is really interesting, but is more complicated. Maybe PCI is the best for now. If you have a Hammerfall around somewhere, take a look at the card. There is almost nothing on it and it's all stuff that's available through Avnet or most any large distributor. Probably I should price those chips but my card is in use right now. Let me know if I've answered your basic questions. Cheers, Mark

On 15 Dec 2004 13:03:24 -0800, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote: OK, so as I see it we have a few choices: (Internal) - PCI (External) - PCI - Carbus variant - some physical interface to the box - USB 2.0 (480Mb/S) - 1394a (400Mb/S) - 1394b (800+Mb/S) Possibly. I'm not sure yet, but it's a very valid concern. If we were concerned about this then we should investigate other FPGA vendors (Altera, Lattice & others) to see if it's the same story. I don't know. I did a quick search in Google's Advance page for Xilinx Open Source Tools and found a large number of pages talking about this stuff. It may not be as bad as we are worrying about. I'll check more later. not true exactly. more in a minute. Yes. Yes. If we go with local conversion. More noise issues, etc., but manageable if we want to deal with it. Probably this ends up with a lower cost for a 2-4 I/O sound card, but for higher port count it will get ore expensive and I don't think we add much value doing that part. You used to be able to buy an AI-3 on EBay for around $200 IIRC. Right now there are none so maybe all of those are gone and we need to find acceptable external conversion units in different price ranges. OK, this is where I think it gets difficult. I'll give some overview ideas and then we can go from there. Asynchronous 1394 is a 'memory mapped' packet. The packets are addressed to a specific device on the bus (Bus #, ID #) and then they carry an address. The 1394 model assumes that the packet is delivered to memory in the remote device and then the remote device does with it what it wants to do with it. If you delve a bit deeper into the hardware behind this idea what you eventually run into is that the 1394 controller has/needs a DMA unit and the box has memory. The 1394 chip delivers the packet to memory and then the uC deals with it when it can. This is generally needed since the uC cannot respond fast enough to keep up with all the packets. This is the basic idea behind a 1394 OHCI controller. All the processor is doing is setting up a linked list of memory addresses. The OHCI controller is accessing that list, using the address in the DMA controller, and moving data in and out of memory. It works fine except it assumes an OHCI stack (implying at least part of an OS) and it assumes memory. Both of these are expensive in different ways when you talk about high speed data packets and personally I'd rather avoid it. However I cannot completely ignore Async operation as it's required to be recognized on the bus. On the other hand, Isochronous 1394 just delivers data on a channel. There is a destination address again, but it's just a channel number. (0-63, 63 being broadcast) Any device that wants the data just watches for packets with the right channel number, chunks it into a FIFO and uses it for whatever purpose. If data is missing then you get a crackle, snap or pop. However there is no real processor intervention (or doesn't technically have to be) with the data. Conceptually it could just arrive as a serial bit stream, be reformatted by some simple hardware machine into 24-bit parallel data, and be delivered to the D/A and you get sound. It could also be reformatted and delivered to s/pdif or ADAT and sent on again. The CPU overhead with Iso 1394 is basically very low which is why it works for video, etc. So, I guess the point here is that making a complete, 1394-based device is fairly difficult and possibly a bit more expensive than doing something in an FPGA. There are 1394 devices that are uC-based but I don't know if they are supported by Open Source tools. The other thing is that, again, as FPGAs improve you get more functionality over time and can add more capability to the boards. (Ala Creamware, etc.) Personally I like that idea even if it costs me a bit more, but I'm not making the final decision here. It's completely open. What I can *possibly* do it try to work out some part costs. I think this would, like all other projects, require a web site to post ideas, drawings, schematics, etc. How would we do that? Sourceforge? Somewhere else? I can draw system diagrams very quickly but they need to be posted somewhere for others to look at and vote on. Dunno. We could leverage the Linux 1394 stack and try to do this with a uC and an OHCI controller. If it's not OHCI then the Linux stack does us very little good. Via and others make peripheral oriented 1394 chips. They get used in many embedded devices and are probably about right for this sort of project. I could look into that over the next few weeks. Good project when sitting in front of the TV late at night. After we find a few we'd have to cross reference against Open Source tools. That would take some help from others. And we haven't discussed it, but maybe there are completely different architectural ideas we should look at. For instance, what about a device that ONLY worked with Jack? I have a suspicion that this might be interesting and less expensive, but that's just a guess right now. Would be sort of cool to make a card that DIDN'T work with Windows. ;-) - Mark

On Wed, 2004-12-15 at 13:59, Mark Knecht wrote: This had not occured to me. Maybe even easier than 1394? I would imagine that either 1394 or usb2 would be more flexible than a pure pci approach (ie: it would be useful for laptops). Unless, of course, you count pcmcia interfaces but they have their own set of problems as demostrated by rme hardware having issues with some chipsets in linux. Let me know what you find. I'm curious, maybe there are tools available that are open source. The DA/AD and even the spdif/adat interfaces could be optional. Or modular. If this is an external box then that is more of an option. I see, that makes it more complex. That was why I was asking if it was possible at all. I was hoping the chip would have an option for non-mmaped access. If that were the case then you could trade complexity (ie: mmaped ram) for speed in the external ucontroller so that it can deal with all the packets on the fly. Hmmm, interesting. So this mode would be a possibility for a really dumb and simple peripherial. You mean hardware capabilities, right? Because a firmware based controller would be also upgradable. And/or you could use faster chips when they become available. This is all (for now) theory :-) Send me urls if you find any... Sounds like the right kind of hardware to use for this. :-) -- Fernando

Dear colleagues, There are several important rules when speaking on open source hardware: Hardware should use protocols, interfaces, cores, programming tools, debugging tools that are free in full meaning , i .e. free as freedom. That kind of hardware should be fully documented .i.e schematics, diagrams, assembly instruction, parts list, gerber files etc. in order to be really free fo reveryone and not only to companies that would use that for profit only not taking care about freedom. It is desirable that hardware is fully programmable or reconfigurable by using FPGA and similar devices. Thus, it is needed to examine which manufacturers ie.e Xilinx, Motorola, Analog Devices do manufacture processors or other chips that may be used in audio applications. The rest is choice of technical solution, but if you study carefully legal consequences of using firmware that is not free or using protocols and standards that are not free than you will see that technical choice of chips should be carefully undertaken. Regards, Vedran Quoting Fernando Lopez-Lezcano <nando(a)ccrma.stanford.edu>du>:

On 16 Dec 2004 00:06:08 +0100, Andreas Kuckartz &lt;A.Kuckartz(a)ping.de&gt; wrote: <ALMOST TOTAL SNIP> Removing consortium(a)lists.linuxaudio.org as I don't know what it is. These are some good links. Great actually. I know of the Bridge Co. chips, as well as some of what Phillips, Sony, Yamaha and others do in this area. I hadn't seen the TC chip. It looks quite cool. I would suggest people think about what they *want* to accomplish with a project like this, and then look at what role, if any, chips like this would play. In my mind I could create a WONDERFUL sound card using the Bridge Co. or TC chips, along with a couple of line drivers, D/A's ect.. This would work and would likely work very well. However, there is nothing 'Open Source' about the hardware design. The board design & layout could be open, but as we've discussed already this group cannot achieve the economy of scale that a real board manufacturer would reach and thus our boards will always be more expensive. Why would any of us by the card from this group for $350 when you could by it from M-Audio for $199? I don't think makes sense. I wouldn't. (Correct me if you think this won't be the case.) In my mind the real 'Open Source Sound Card' (OSSC?) is one where we control the architecture of the hardware and what that hardware is capable of doing. That is where we add value. (Assuming we have value to add!) ;-) I do not think we add value duplicating a demo board program designed at Bridge CO. or TC. That's what the folks in Taiwan do and that's what gets marketed through M-Audio and others. Just my thoughts. Thanks, Mark

Steve Harris wrote: I suppose you mean this one: http://freebob.sf.net/ A month ago Pieter Palmers &lt;ppalmers(a)esat.kuleuven.ac.be&gt; has sent a mail with details about the background of that project to this mailing list. I only noticed that now. Maybe it makes sense to make that known to other manufacturers using the BridgeCo chip and ask them to support that project? Cheers, Andreas

Hello, just info for storytellers: (since the themme is open source hardware and rme ) stoneages ago i made an open source hardwarecard, called MAAS (see http://iem.kug.ac.at/ritsch/hardware/maas/main.html ) So I made a four layer dsp-card for use with ,many ption including standalone, but the main problem was bugs in the dspcore (pci interface) and so on. I was a kind of followup of a project of elector, a german electronic magazine, where also a first SPDIf was a project (i think using an fpga), where rme followed witheir first RME card ;-) and I ended up with writing the first kernel-driver for rme-hammerfall, since their product was better and more costless than the open source hardware (if i calculate the assembly work as money), even if i had the the work writing the linux-kernel driver, i needed for my project. Doing a study project (and open source hardware) and a product for distribution is quite another thing and a big step, so open source hardware is a different than software, since somebody has to build it and this is work. But anyhow, I like the idea... maybe somebody want continue to do the MAAS, nowadays this should be much cheaper.... mfg winfried ritsch Am Mittwoch, 15. Dezember 2004 22:03 schrieb Fernando Lopez-Lezcano: wrote: -- -- - ao.Univ.Prof. DI Winfried Ritsch - ritsch(a)iem.at - http://iem.at/ritsch - Institut fuer Elektronische Musik und Akustik - University of Music and Dramatic Art Graz - Tel. ++43-316-389-3510 (3170) Fax ++43-316-389-3171 - PGP-ID 69617A69 (see keyserver http://wwwkeys.at.gpg.net/) --

LAU -- Correct me if I'm wrong here ... but ... lack of supported hardware is part of the reason people don't migrate to *nix operating systems; and another is the frightening complexity involved in doing anything with *nix which the OS and its software inherits from the relatively small, disorganized, underfunded community. add to this a dash of social ignorance and general complacency -- perhaps some nearsightedness too? -- and i think thats where we, the OpenSource community, stand with respect to the masses. It is difficult to say which of the above issues is the biggest hindrance to Open Source domination. However, hardware support is crucial; and thats a non-debatable fact. Concordantly, it seems to me that, if our goal is to spread cheer and free software throughout the land to our fellow men, we MUST INSIST on developing drivers for everything that has achieved either extreme popularity or extreme utility. By INSIST i mean the following [taking this RME situation for example]: a group of people [some ALSA-dev people, lets say] speaks to RME about developing the drivers, agreeing to sign not only an NDA but some other agreement which has the following [or similar] conditions: (1) RME controls the source however it wants [open or closed] and for as long as it wants. (2) the NDA team is not allowed the exclusive right to modify the source, RME can do so in-house if it chooses, but both groups must be notified of alterations and be allowed ample time to inspect the source to make sure said changes do not break everything before the new code is used to generate new binaries. (3) RME and the NDA team jointly distribute pre-compiled drivers to LAUs. [so on and so forth]. Everyone's happy -- RME discloses nothing and therefore risks nothing, *nix gets compatibility and therefore a potentially larger user base, which leads to potentially larger development teams, communities, which leads to ... [imagination required beyond this point]. Obviously this is not perfect, but i think we can all agree that a half-open- and half-closed-source model is better than the current situation with regard to RME and Linux. Thanks in advance for any comments; and special thanks in advance to anyone who gets the ball rolling toward the establishment of some relationship like this with RME or any other manufacturer: you will have my blessing and full cooperation. Best regards as always, --vord

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:48:59 -0500, Dave Robillard &lt;drobilla(a)connect.carleton.ca&gt; wrote: see my reply to thewade. this is so wrong. binaries from this group can be provided for any arch just like they are with any other set of drivers. RME, or whoever the manufacturer is, isnt even the one developing the driver, nor maintaning it. see? Please excuse my choice of words; but, Dave, it doesnt make much sense to say you disagree when you dont understand in the first place. Providing Linux compatability is the issue here, and it boils down to how badly you want it. Personally Im not willing to bend over in the least ... thats not what this approach is about. It is about proving a point to hardware manufacturers, like RME, who [to their own disadvantage, mind you] ignore users of opensource operating systems. They mistakenly believe there is no money to be made here ... we can bitch about it or we can prove it. You've made your choice; now stand aside. And, btw, this isnt the same thread. RME is just an example. I dont intend to get angry or political or any such thing. Avoid using harsh words, be civilized, and all will be well. --vord

LAUs -- all I'm trying to do is appeal to those people, if there are any, who are willing to come together and face companies like RME and offer them a compromise as i outlined. nothing more or less. the company is worried about disclosure, fine ... thats their business. i want compatibility for such and such hardware though, and I'm willing to sign an NDA, help develop the driver, and negotiate the terms for distribution. whoever is interested in helping should speak up, voice their opinion on my method, and help get things organized. if you don't think it will work, fine; but thats all i was trying to do here. my apologies to anyone who is bothered by it, but i don't see how an attempt would hurt anything. it is simply a different method of, as you say, "letting [the manufacturer] know how i feel". if you don't have the time, resources, know-how, or even the inclination to assist, i certainly wont think any less of you. [and I'm not being sarcastic] best regards, --vord On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 00:03:49 -0500, Lee Revell &lt;rlrevell(a)joe-job.com&gt; wrote:

On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 06:43, Lee Revell wrote: Is there a difference between you getting paid by RME or any other company for doing a closed or open source driver? Marek

Hi Vord, On Fri, 2004-12-17 at 03:45, vord wrote: This is unacceptable unless RME is willing to pay for such service. As an owner of fireface and open source believer i can only tell that i'm not interested in closed source drivers. Even if they already existed i wouldn't be insterested in keeping fireface. The reason why i bought it is, i believed that RME would have no problems releasing such specs again. I absolutely believe in companies providing opensource support for their hardware products. http://www.audioscience.com http://open.neurosaudio.com Those companies already provide not only open source drivers but (in case of neuros) also schematics for their hardware and firmware source code. I certainly do not know how this should hurt them. Quite the opposite. Because if you don't do that yourself you'll end up like this: http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/build.shtml http://gallery.ipodlounge.com/ipod/thumbnails.php?album=6 Marek

On Thu, 2004-16-12 at 22:54 -0600, vord wrote: So, you want to make companies support open-source operating systems by turning those systems into proprietary operating systems? Well then they wouldn't be supporting open-source operating systems would they? If you want a proprietary unix-based OS for music work, go use Mac OSX. It has all the "compatibility" you could want, and more (and far, far, far more music applications than Linux). Then those of us who care about the future of Linux don't have to watch it be slowly destroyed by people like you trying to "help". Seriously. I'm not trying to be mean, or critical, or whatever. If you don't care about the freedom of it, why use Linux? Relatively speaking it's a crap audio production OS. Go use OSX, (or even, ugh, Windows) - it has what you want. If you do have reasons for using Linux, they stem directly from the open-source nature of it, whether you realize it now or not. -DR-

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 00:43:49 -0500, Lee Revell &lt;rlrevell(a)joe-job.com&gt; wrote: Fair enough Lee. You should be compensated. And I'd be willing to use a closed source driver. I have no issues about that at all. I think what is ignored here is that RME won't pay anyone to do the work (internal programmers or external contractors) unless they believe that they get something in return. Generally that means money, most probably from sales. Good will is fleating and generally doesn't count for me. Since this conversation continues to ignore this reality in business I think it will never happen. Unless we make it a win for RME's business then it will never be win-win. - Mark

Mark Knecht wrote: Some brands care a lot about reputation and good will for economic reasons. Cheers, Andreas

On Sat, 2004-12-18 at 01:49, Lee Revell wrote: An open source driver isn't the same thing as open source software other than both being open source. From the companies' perspective, an open source driver is likely going to be the cause for a higher revenues these days(although some people may think that the numbers would not be that interesting still, assume it's ~100 for RME and ~20000 for newer ATI cards, although i think it's a higher number). Still no investement has been made into developing and supporting such drivers. Instead, the oss devs are doing that kind of work basically for free(perhaps they get one free unit), as a service for the companies. I think it's pretty much unfair. Marek

On Sat, 2004-12-18 at 14:56, Rick Taylor wrote: In case of RME this wouldn't be that accurate since there don't seem to be that many people who are willing to participate on a market research type project(enter your name and type of card). The forum thread didn't go above 30 posts, but there were many RME users who participated in the RME thread on lad/lau, which in turn didn't participate in the forum thread, and a rough search through the lad archives revealed another dozen of RME users(haven't tried lau and ardour dev/user lists). There are people who bought 2 products from RME. And there are many people outside lad/lau which do use linux audio and probably RME hardware(so such project would need to be broadly announced, /. and similar). The ATI numbers are pretty accurate though (the ATI petition). Copyright isn't the issue here. The issue here is basically - someone does work he doesn't get paid for, and another one profits from such work. Marek

On Saturday 18 December 2004 10:48 pm, Marek Peteraj wrote: It's too bad there's no way to notify all linux users of something... like a newsticker for administrative issues, security announcements and so on. It just makes sense that if linux as a whole is going to maximize its capabilities that it be organized. Personally, I'd like to have gnu gnus flash across my taskbar a few times a day... It would be nice to be able to stay updated that way. Maybe folk wouldn't mind filling in the occasional survey. If they don't know about it though it doesn't work. I'm sure you'd get a relatively huge response if folk did know. I meant RMEs copyright to their firmware/drivers. It's the only thing really keeping you from just using that code. If folk could give them a reason to go open source with it I'm sure they'd let go of it or write linux firmware and work with developers to get compatible software put together. {I don't see why they'd not want to pay folk to write linux firmware. {open source or not} Apparently they don't realize how many linux users they have. Maybe it's just not worth their while. I don't know how many linux users there are. I don't know what percentage of their sales is to linux users. -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

On Sat, 2004-12-18 at 19:01, Rick Taylor wrote: Absolutely agreed. However, judging from a year old discussion, it seems theres no consensus to do this at least for linux audio. I know. :) This is different for specifications, drivers and firmware. In case of firmware, the are probably more hurdles than just the wish to stay proprietary, since there are no free devtools for for most fpgas, dsps and such. In case of specs or drivers, they are free to do what rme did with fireface or what audioscience usually does with their own products. It all becomes a moral issue right now. But it seems ridiculous to me that a typical company isn't tracking every opportunity to generate revenue. Marek

On Sunday 19 December 2004 08:16 am, Marek Peteraj wrote: Maybe looking at "linux audio" as a separate entity is part of the problem? What would it take to set up a subscription broadcast system with a plug in applet for folks docks/taskbars? I know :} This is what doesn't make sense. Why do they want to stay proprietary? It seems to me that they'd make more money working with folk to get optimal drivers and firmware {and, by extension, increased compatibility} for their hardware... SGI, IBM, etc, etc have learned this... Do they need Windows zealots that badly? Linux is the entity doing the sales, no? -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

On Friday 17 December 2004 08:10 am, Dave Robillard wrote: It's a better os with much more potential than any system out there? -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

On Thursday 16 December 2004 08:45 pm, vord wrote: Ummm... -- www.RTaylor-Design.Com

Look. I know this thread is like so last week, but I've just been catching up with it and some of my buttons have been pushed here. Tim's has correctly defined a truism here, and I am guessing that he would probably agree with me if I said that a prime example of a truism is "They tried Marxism in Russia and it didn't work." Marx denounced the growing "public" sector in Napoleon III's France as "state capitalism" and so there is no reason to believe he would not have denounced the Soviet Union for exactly the same thing. We only think of the Soviet system as Marxist because Lenin said so. That's really not fair on Marx. I could say quite a lot more about this, so if you don't want me then please don't set me off again by posting such ill-informed nonsense. Let me put this a bit more strongly. Marx was not primarily concerned about how "fair" or not it was that certain people got more of the pie than others. He was concerned most of all about the spiritual state of people who were coming more and more to see their life's work as being no more than commodities. In this sense he understood that those who identified themselves with the capitalist class were no less spiritually oppressed than the working class families whose labour they exploited (think stock options). This is a very important point in favour of open-source. For instance if I want to do audio work the stuff that will give me the quickest and easiest results is proprietary. Unfortunately, because many of the copyrights and patents are concentrated in very few hands, I will find that by paying the license fee I am transferring even more wealth from the poor (yes I am, relatively speaking) to the rich. However if I try to avoid this problem by using software without paying for it I find that I am still in a bind. This is because I am still in a position of psychological dependence on the big software house to produce the magic thing that will make me creative. Of course there is no creativity unless you make things for yourself, and there is no humanity unless you collaborate with others and recognise that they are creative and human just as much as you are. That is Marxism, and it is also my number two reason why I choose to go through agonies trying to get Linux to do sound stuff. (The number one reason is of course that Windows is suicidally useless. I know that's not particularly Marxist, but I do think that Bill Gates would stop being such a miserable tyrant if he actually decided to create something for himself (i.e. something he could share with 6 billion equals) rather than just hoarding money acquired through intimidating and exploiting other people and stealing their work). As you may now see there is a lengthy tract to be bursting to be written here, so if you don't want me to write it then +please please please+ read some good books (e.g. Erich Fromm's "Marx's View of Man") and don't set me off by posting some "I'm asking them to go and live in Russia"-type nonsense you heard off the television or at primary school. Robert PS I posted something a couple of weeks ago about something else to which a number of people replied. I just want to say thank you to all those people and to say that the reason I didn't follow up was because kmail ate my Linux Audio mailbox and I lost track of where I was. Sorry. Some of the suggestions you made were very useful. -- Robert Persson is powered by Linux. No he's not. He's just tired.