18 Aug
2005
18 Aug
'05
9:10 a.m.
Hi friends,
for some days I was looking for some open & free hardware and specially
soundcards.
I find some informations about openhardware... but not really on the
question of soundcard (some dac to build yourself). I would like to know
if some of you guys using open & free soundcard and if not at least a
way to do it yourself... or even if you know people who had a project to
release some prototypes or have similar projects.
I could be really great to use a gnu/linux plateform with so much & good
free audio software and to use an open & free soundcard to record & play
this sounds!!
thanks for the help
Julien
18 Aug
18 Aug
10:45 a.m.
On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 15:10:50 +0200, joke
<joke(a)apo33.org> wrote:
Hi friends,
for some days I was looking for some open & free hardware and specially
soundcards.
I find some informations about openhardware... but not really on the
question of soundcard
(some dac to build yourself). I would like to know if some of you guys
using open & free
soundcard and if not at least a way to do it yourself... or even if you
know people who had
a project to release some prototypes or have similar projects.
I could be really great to use a gnu/linux plateform with so much & good
free audio software
and to use an open & free soundcard to record & play this sounds!!
Hi,
AFAIK there are no "open hardware" solutions out there that you could
use to build your own soundcard. It's just that the economy of hardware
manufacturing and writing (free) software is totally different.
It would not be impossible to roll your own, depending on what you mean
by "soundcard" and your level of engineering skills.
Let's assume you want a 8in/8out device with 24/96 capability. It would
be easiest to make an external interface that you could connect to the
PC via (say) firewire. I imagine the board would have some audio codecs,
a firewire (or other) controller, and (say) an ARM to control the
operation of the unit as a whole.
At this point, you would have to
1) design, test and prototype the board. This assumes a fair knowledge
of electrical engineering and system design. As of prototyping, think
of a 2-(or 4-)layer PCB with a good couple of quad-flat-pack SMDs on it,
you're not gonna do it in your backyard.
2) write a (Linux) driver for your device, or provide specs and get
someone else to write a driver. This is admittedly the easier part.
As you can see, 1) poses a certain financial and technological barrier
to entering the "soundcard makers" camp. With the simplest possible
specification, I still estimate the costs of prototyping it to
multi-thousands (in Euro or US$). It's just not economically viable
when the stores are full of dirt cheap hardware.
As to the "dac to build yourself", I would also say nope. Not counting
educational, demo or other such purposes, you cannot build a usable
AD/DA converter. (From discretes, that is. If you are an ASIC supplier,
things look different ;). Common bit-resolutions need such an accuracy
of components (not primarily with regard to absolute ratings, but to
parameter scatter among "identical" components) irrespectively of the
AD/DA conversion method used that the components need to be integrated
on the same silicon. (Think of thermal issues.)
My 2 eurocents. Sorry if this was all trivial.
Tom
11:27 a.m.
Hallo,
joke hat gesagt: // joke wrote:
for some days I was looking for some open & free
hardware and specially
soundcards.
There was someone here or on LAD or alsa-* who built himself a USB
soundcard. You may want to search the archives. It didn't look that
hard, as you can get almost ready to run chipsets from Burr-Brown, now
TI.
Ciao
--
Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__
_ __latest track: "plak" @ http://footils.org/cms/show/44
1:33 p.m.
Frank Barknecht wrote:
joke hat gesagt: // joke wrote:
http://www.teg-electronics.com/~teg/
HTH
Clemens
for some days I was looking for some open &
free hardware and specially
soundcards.
There was someone here or on LAD or alsa-* who built himself a USB
soundcard. 
12:10 p.m.
I tend to agree with Tom's 2 eurocents.
Even though there is enough expertise to design the hardware and write the drivers for
such a thing in my household; I have much smaller projects that I can barely keep up to
getting done. I'd prefer to let the comercial folks do this. By far, they have the
economy of scale(and sale) in their favor.
But the thought of doing is very seductive as an intellectual exercise.
Tracey(7am and haven't gotten to sleep for the night(uh wait, it's light
outside))
12:57 p.m.
Even though there is enough expertise to design the
hardware and write the
drivers for such a thing in my household; I have much smaller projects that
I can barely keep up to getting done. I'd prefer to let the comercial folks
do this. By far, they have the economy of scale(and sale) in their favor.
But the thought of doing is very seductive as an intellectual exercise.
for buil one ok, it was more in the this way I thought about it, intellectual
exercise... but maybe some people know some groups that commercialize this kind
of soundcard (any kind of i/o), it's just that as we fight for free software and
to work and show how to use free audio software, I give advice & help to set a
lot of audio box (studio, live, radio...) and I just think about propose the
best, free, open device for audio (soundcard to start)...
I use a lot of soundcards (u24 egosys, some M-audio, RME, some Echo...etc) But
if I know a compagny in the free software spirit, I would use and recommand
their soundcards ;-)
cheers
julien
APODIO : http://www.apodio.org (Liveaudiolinux in a box?!)
7039
days inactive
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linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
5 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Clemens Ladisch -
Frank Barknecht -
joke -
jokeļ¼ apo33.org
-
Tom Szilagyi -
Tracey Hytry