12 May
2006
12 May
'06
11:36 a.m.
Hello!
Me and some of my friends are going to live together for a while in a
couple of months. One friend of mine is a musician, and he wants to be
be able to record his tunes in our new place. I'm going to bring my PC
with me, so we thought he'd buy some recording device and we'll
connect it to my computer and will share it.
I'm running Linux of course, and he got no problem with it, but after
looking for a recording device for a while, it seems like Linux
doesn't support most of them.
The most appealing ones are those which can be connected via Firewire.
They're cheap and functional.
I heard about FreeBoB, but it seems like it's an (very) early project,
and that I shouldn't count on it.
Are there any recording devices like the "Focusrite Saffire", the
"Alesis iO-26", the "RME Fireface 400", the "M-Audio Firewire
410",
etc, that are around 350$USD and that Linux supports?
In the worst case, I can always dual-boot, but I really wanted us to
use Linux for the music stuff.
Thanks!
Yo'av.
12 May
12 May
11:42 a.m.
I heard about FreeBoB, but it seems like it's an
(very) early project,
and that I shouldn't count on it.
Are there any recording devices like the "Focusrite Saffire", the
"Alesis iO-26", the "RME Fireface 400", the "M-Audio Firewire
410",
etc, that are around 350$USD and that Linux supports?
no.
12:15 p.m.
On Fri, 2006-05-12 at 09:42 -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
to be clear, they will work with freebob (except the RME fireface, which
will never work on linux unless RME changes its mind about drivers for
it).
--p
I heard about
FreeBoB, but it seems like it's an (very) early project,
and that I shouldn't count on it.
Are there any recording devices like the "Focusrite Saffire", the
"Alesis iO-26", the "RME Fireface 400", the "M-Audio Firewire
410",
etc, that are around 350$USD and that Linux supports?
no. 
2:49 p.m.
Paul Davis wrote:
On Fri, 2006-05-12 at 09:42 -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
to be clear, they will work with freebob (except the RME fireface, which
will never work on linux unless RME changes its mind about drivers for
it).
To be really clear:
"... to be clear, they will work with [future versions of] freebob ..."
There are plans to include support for more firewire devices into
freebob, but currently only the devices based on the BridgeCo DM1000 &
DM1500 are supported. And not even all of these due to some excessive
customisation of the reference firmware by some device manufacturers
(most notably M-Audio for the 410 and the 1418).
Currently there are two other chipsets/solutions that are planned to be
supported:
- Metric Halo devices (Mobile I/O 2882 & Mobile I/O ULN-2)
- Devices based on the DICE-II chipset, as far as the actual device
manufactureres cooperate.
According to my information, almost all current firewire interfaces use
either a BridgeCo chipset or a DICE-II chipset. Having support for these
two majors, and adding some smaller full-custom devices (like the Metric
Halo's) will have us covering a lot of devices.
In the case of full custom devices, like the Metric Halo or the RME
Fireface, support will be completely dependant on the stance of the
device manufacturer. So no RME support. Nor any MOTU support.
To summarize: if you want to buy a FW interface, go ahead and buy one of
the supported ones. They do work on linux. Some more advanced features
are missing, but that's only a matter of time.
Pieter
I heard
about FreeBoB, but it seems like it's an (very) early project,
and that I shouldn't count on it.
Are there any recording devices like the "Focusrite Saffire", the
"Alesis iO-26", the "RME Fireface 400", the "M-Audio Firewire
410",
etc, that are around 350$USD and that Linux supports?
no. 
13 May
13 May
10:14 a.m.
On Friday 12 May 2006 17:48, Pieter Palmers was like:
To be really clear:
"... to be clear, they will work with [future versions of] freebob ..."
There are plans to include support for more firewire devices into
freebob, but currently only the devices based on the BridgeCo DM1000 &
DM1500 are supported. And not even all of these due to some excessive
customisation of the reference firmware by some device manufacturers
(most notably M-Audio for the 410 and the 1418).
Currently there are two other chipsets/solutions that are planned to be
supported:
- Metric Halo devices (Mobile I/O 2882 & Mobile I/O ULN-2)
- Devices based on the DICE-II chipset, as far as the actual device
manufactureres cooperate.
According to my information, almost all current firewire interfaces use
either a BridgeCo chipset or a DICE-II chipset. Having support for these
two majors, and adding some smaller full-custom devices (like the Metric
Halo's) will have us covering a lot of devices.
In the case of full custom devices, like the Metric Halo or the RME
Fireface, support will be completely dependant on the stance of the
device manufacturer. So no RME support. Nor any MOTU support.
To summarize: if you want to buy a FW interface, go ahead and buy one of
the supported ones. They do work on linux. Some more advanced features
are missing, but that's only a matter of time.
Thanks for such a clear statement Pieter. Great work!
I'm interested, how much of this work has been supported by the various
hardware manufacturers in terms of information or even hardware (? ;) or have
you bootstrapped this project entirely from the Linux end?
--
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim
We are the people We've been waiting for.
12 May
12 May
12:13 p.m.
Yo'av Moshe wrote:
I heard about FreeBoB, but it seems like it's an
(very) early project,
and that I shouldn't count on it.
Don't be misguided by the fact that we only have (pre-)alpha software on
our site. The alpha's have become more like beta verions, and we are
preparing a first release for the near future. If the sourceforge cvs
servers would still be up and running, it would probably be ready. But
untill they fix their CVS, we can't access our code and we have to wait.
There are still some issues with our native ALSA driver support, but we
have a functional jackd backend which should enable you to do whatever
you want. If you use the jack2alsa plugin, you can even run ALSA
programs pretty decent.
I wouldn't say that you can't count on us.
Are there any recording devices like the
"Focusrite Saffire", the
"Alesis iO-26", the "RME Fireface 400", the "M-Audio Firewire
410",
etc, that are around 350$USD and that Linux supports?
check http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
to see what we support.
Note that the M-Audio 410 isn't supported (
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/FAQ#Will_the_M-Audio_410_.2F_1814_…)
$350 isn't a big budget though.
In the worst case, I can always dual-boot, but I
really wanted us to
use Linux for the music stuff.
If you want to use Linux, and you want a firewire device, get one of the
devices on our supported device list. They all work on windows too. They
give you the best chance of good linux support for the moment.
Greets,
Pieter Palmers
FreeBob developer
12:52 p.m.
At 16:13 +0200 12/5/06, Pieter Palmers wrote:
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
to see what we support.
hey, it looks like the whole audio setup for my linux rig just got a
heck of a lot easier .. i just confirmed that this works great on my
MEPIS laptop (Dell) and Presonus FirePOD (which i love) firewire
audio interface, so this is really great news for me! well done,
freeBob'ers!
(PS Yo'av: the firepod is a lovely audio interface, btw .. it may not
be in the 350bux budget, but maybe it is, if you shop around,
affordable after all..)
--
;
Jay Vaughan
1:53 p.m.
On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 04:52:21PM +0200, Jay Vaughan wrote:
At 16:13 +0200 12/5/06, Pieter Palmers wrote:
Looks to be about $600 US, not bad for the feature set
(8 mic inputs).
I might pick up one of these. Jay, what kind of latency are you getting
with it?
--
Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
to see what we support.
hey, it looks like the whole audio setup for my linux rig just got a
heck of a lot easier .. i just confirmed that this works great on my
MEPIS laptop (Dell) and Presonus FirePOD (which i love) firewire
audio interface, so this is really great news for me! well done,
freeBob'ers!
(PS Yo'av: the firepod is a lovely audio interface, btw .. it may not
be in the 350bux budget, but maybe it is, if you shop around,
affordable after all..)
2:31 p.m.
Paul Winkler wrote:
On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 04:52:21PM +0200, Jay Vaughan
wrote:
The current freebob code + recent firmware should give you around
350frames of latency at 44100/48000 (about 7ms). Round trip including AD
/ DA, measured using jdelay.
Pieter
At 16:13 +0200 12/5/06, Pieter Palmers wrote:
Looks to be about $600 US, not bad for the feature set
(8 mic inputs).
I might pick up one of these. Jay, what kind of latency are you getting
with it?
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
to see what we support.
hey, it looks like the whole audio setup for my linux rig just got a
heck of a lot easier .. i just confirmed that this works great on my
MEPIS laptop (Dell) and Presonus FirePOD (which i love) firewire
audio interface, so this is really great news for me! well done,
freeBob'ers!
(PS Yo'av: the firepod is a lovely audio interface, btw .. it may not
be in the 350bux budget, but maybe it is, if you shop around,
affordable after all..)
2:56 p.m.
On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 06:32:01PM +0200, Pieter Palmers wrote:
Paul Winkler wrote:
Not bad at all!
I haven't measured with jdelay, but if I understand correctly,
round-trip latency is d + (p + p*n)/sr, where p is the -p
arg to the jackd backend, n is the -n argument, sr is the sampling rate,
and d is the latency introduced by DA and AD conversions.
Assuming d is about 1-2 ms, that means you're running with
something like jackd -d alsa ... -p 64 -n 3
or -p 64 -n 2 ?
If so, that's really pretty nice, I haven't done any better
on my delta 66 (but I haven't tried aggressively to go lower).
I can sort of run at -p 32 -n 3 (3ms + d) but I get dropouts.
--
Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com
(re. presonus Firepod latency)... what kind of
latency are you getting
with it?
The current freebob code + recent firmware should give you around
350frames of latency at 44100/48000 (about 7ms). Round trip including AD
/ DA, measured using jdelay.
13 May
13 May
11:18 a.m.
Paul Winkler wrote:
On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 06:32:01PM +0200, Pieter
Palmers wrote:
-p 64 -n 3
Paul Winkler wrote:
Not bad at all!
I haven't measured with jdelay, but if I understand correctly,
round-trip latency is d + (p + p*n)/sr, where p is the -p
arg to the jackd backend, n is the -n argument, sr is the sampling rate,
and d is the latency introduced by DA and AD conversions.
Assuming d is about 1-2 ms, that means you're running with
something like jackd -d alsa ... -p 64 -n 3
or -p 64 -n 2 ? (re. presonus Firepod latency)... what kind of
latency are you getting
with it?
The current freebob code + recent firmware should give you around
350frames of latency at 44100/48000 (about 7ms). Round trip including AD
/ DA, measured using jdelay.
If so, that's really pretty nice, I haven't done any better
on my delta 66 (but I haven't tried aggressively to go lower).
I can sort of run at -p 32 -n 3 (3ms + d) but I get dropouts.
You need a very well tuned system in order for the -p64 -n3 setup to
work without dropouts though, and even then... We are working on
improving the ieee1394 kernel support in order to improve this.
Pieter
7:35 p.m.
Hey, thanks for all the respones.
I guess I'll go with FreeBoB then, and find a device that suites me
the best and is on the Supported Devices list.
I'd like to contribute to the FreeBoB, but probably that's off-topic
so I'll contact Pieter personally.
Thanks again!
Yo'av Moshe
12 May
12 May
2:44 p.m.
I use the presonus firebox, which can be found for around $300, and it
works great with freebob. Be sure to check out Pieter's instructions
for installing, they work great!
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Compiling_from_CVS_HOWTO
Jay Vaughan wrote:
At 16:13 +0200 12/5/06, Pieter Palmers wrote:
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
to see what we support.
hey, it looks like the whole audio setup for my linux rig just got a
heck of a lot easier .. i just confirmed that this works great on my
MEPIS laptop (Dell) and Presonus FirePOD (which i love) firewire audio
interface, so this is really great news for me! well done, freeBob'ers!
(PS Yo'av: the firepod is a lovely audio interface, btw .. it may not be
in the 350bux budget, but maybe it is, if you shop around, affordable
after all..)
2:51 p.m.
Peter Finnegan wrote:
I use the presonus firebox, which can be found for
around $300, and it
works great with freebob. Be sure to check out Pieter's instructions
for installing, they work great!
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Compiling_from_CVS_HOWTO
Unless you are a debian/ubuntu user. If someone has the right way to
perform the steps indicated on such a system, please help us out. I am
running Fedora+PlanetCCRMA, and apparently it is pretty different.
Jay Vaughan wrote:
> At 16:13 +0200 12/5/06, Pieter Palmers wrote:
>
>> http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
>> to see what we support.
>
>
> hey, it looks like the whole audio setup for my linux rig just got a
> heck of a lot easier .. i just confirmed that this works great on my
> MEPIS laptop (Dell) and Presonus FirePOD (which i love) firewire audio
> interface, so this is really great news for me! well done, freeBob'ers!
>
> (PS Yo'av: the firepod is a lovely audio interface, btw .. it may not
> be in the 350bux budget, but maybe it is, if you shop around,
> affordable after all..)
>
1:52 p.m.
On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 04:13:04PM +0200, Pieter Palmers wrote:
check
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices
to see what we support.
FYI, while browsing I noticed a couple stale links there, and I can't seem to create
an
account to fix the page. So here's the new links:
Edirol FA-101
http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=702&Paren…
Edirol FA-66
http://www.rolandus.com/products/productdetails.aspx?ObjectId=731&Paren…
--
Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com
12:20 p.m.
On Friday 12 May 2006 14:36, Yo'av Moshe was like:
Are there any recording devices like the
"Focusrite Saffire", the
"Alesis iO-26", the "RME Fireface 400", the "M-Audio Firewire
410",
etc, that are around 350$USD and that Linux supports?
You are looking in exactly the right places. These are the products that
should support Linux. Various of us have spoken to the manufacturers of these
devices at great length. There is no lack of will from the Linux end to
support these devices, however they seem to be still unwilling to open up
their specifications to our developers.
Check out the non-firewire devices which are available from these
manufacturers here:
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/
--
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim
We are the people We've been waiting for.
6763
days inactive
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linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
15 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Jay Vaughan -
Paul Davis -
Paul Winkler -
Peter Finnegan -
Pieter Palmers -
tim hall -
Yo'av Moshe