From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Wed Oct 14 00:02:46 1998
Received: from post.mail.demon.net (post-20.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.27])
	by marvin.jcu.cz (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA00987
	for <alsa-devel@jcu.cz>; Wed, 14 Oct 1998 00:02:08 +0200
Received: from [158.152.21.220] (helo=muse)
	by post.mail.demon.net with smtp (Exim 2.05 #1)
	id 0zTCW3-0003Hm-00
	for alsa-devel@jcu.cz; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 22:02:03 +0000
Received: by muse with Microsoft Mail
	id <01BDF6FD.6F58EEE0@muse>; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:01:39 +0100
Message-ID: <01BDF6FD.6F58EEE0@muse>
From: "Richard W.E. Furse" <richard@muse.demon.co.uk>
To: "'alsa-devel@jcu.cz'" <alsa-devel@jcu.cz>,
        "'Benjamin GOLINVAUX'"
	 <golinvaux@benjamin.net>
Subject: Fiji/Pinnacle, previously RE: OMT
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 22:55:10 +0100
Reply-To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Sender: alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz
Precedence: list

Well...

I have looked into ALSA support for the professional Turtle Beach cards 
(Fiji/Pinnacle) and there ARE Linux drivers for these. Turtle Beach HAVE 
done their bit and provided information to Andrew Veliath 
[andrewtv@usa.net]. They are reluctant to go through the whole process 
again with me though could probably be convinced. Andrew's driver works and 
is available at www.rpi.edu/~veliaa/pinlinux.html. Unfortunately it is an 
OSS driver, and so of no use to me though it may be to you. For the moment 
I continue to develop my new audio tools in parallel: I'm developing the 
user interface/real-time code in Windoze95 with my Fiji card, and working 
with the number crunching/batch processing side on Linux, previewing with 
my AWE32 [see www.muse.demon.co.uk for ongoing projects]. This kinda makes 
sense as Linux's pre-emptive multitasking makes Windoze better at real-time 
processing, although I'd far rather be working with Linux for its 
efficiency and stability. Decisions decisions--some time soon the two will 
have to come together.

Andrew tells me he intends to port the Fiji/Pinnacle driver to ALSA, but 
hasn't give any suggestion of when that might be (reasonably enough--this 
is free software). I have offered to have a go at the port but he hasn't 
replied to my email so I'm a bit stuck. If I attempt the port and do it 
badly (which is likely at first iteration), he might be annoyed (I would 
be) and perhaps redo it himself--which is unfortunate and a waste of time. 
Besides, Andrew deserves the credit after teasing the information out of 
Turtle Beach to start with! In my opinion, the best option would be to 
persuade him to have a go at the ALSA port when he has time. Perhaps anyone 
else interested should let him know? But politely and gratefully--he's 
obviously doing a good job for Linux.

-- Richard

PS I'd agree with you about that the DirectSound API is poor. Pile of shite 
if you ask me--overcomplicated and lacking in flexibility. The 3D interface 
is quite nice, but in the end provides insufficient information for 
implementations to be accurate to the level I'd choose. DirectSound is 
basically designed for games, not real audio applications.

PPS In case I sound disloyal for working with the Windoze audio drivers, 
I'd just like to add that I'd far RATHER be working with Linux! Jaroslav 
and Frank are doing an excellent job.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Jaroslav Kysela [SMTP:perex@jcu.cz]
Sent:	Tuesday, October 13, 1998 12:43 PM
To:	Benjamin GOLINVAUX
Cc:	alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject:	Re: OMT

On Tue, 13 Oct 1998, Benjamin GOLINVAUX wrote:

> Hello Jaroslav...
>
> I am coding a pro shareware audio application (OMT) for NT/Linux that 
would
> allow for reliable real-time (or not) sound and midi rendering. My goal
> is to provide users with something that is not a toy. No fancy graphics,
> just speed and precision.
>
> Our platform of choice would be Linux. We have searched the net for info
> regarding driver sets for Linux and found ALSA was a viable solution for
> us.
>
> However, our question is : do you plan to add or encourage programmer to
> add support for hi-quality sound cards ? I mean turtle beach, dsp
> factory from yamaha and even SBLive.

Turtle Beach Malibu with S/PDIF output is supported at this moment. ALSA
is open to any soundcard, but my time is limited and my plan for future
are improve support for soundcards which have already driver in ALSA and
work on ALSA API / sequencer.

> We long to JUMP in linux coding with alsa but we are afraid support 
stops...

What stops? Support doesn't stop, I'm only saying that I willn't add new
drivers probably in near future. Other people can add new drivers to ALSA
without any limits, of course.

> Unfortunately, We'll have no time to support the code AND the drivers
> ourselves so we need someone else to do it... NT port (for ease of use)
> should work under DirectSound (which is ways too complicated, if you
> know it..).

I'm sorry, but ALSA is developed under GPL. I'm working on it in my free
time (none is paying this MY time).

> We don't know if ALSA is oriented towards pro (or at least prosumer) 
audio.
> If not, we wonder what are your plans for the future (I suppose you are
> the team leader, aren't you ?) and If you don't plan supporting very good
> cards (TurtleBeach would be great for the moment), which would be very
> sad, We'd like you to send us pointers to such libraries.

You speaking about team. Current ALSA team contains only two members (me
and Frank van de Pol which is working on sequencer). I simply must do some
work for university which is my job and some other work for local
providers (do you know - money). It would be nice if someone can offer me
full time job - work on ALSA - such as RedHat, but at this time is my ALSA
work very very limited.

> Also, do you know the latency of your ALSA drivers (that is, minimal echo
> time) with SB16 if audio app is the only non-system process running on,
> let's say, a P2 266 (just to compare with DirectSound on NT).

Andy posts some information about playback latency - about 10ms. I assume
that echo latency could be about 20ms. These numbers should be probably
improved with another Linux task scheduler (which works above 100Hz).

						Jaroslav

-----
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@jcu.cz>
Academic Computer Centre, University of South Bohemia
Branisovska 31, C. Budejovice, CZ-370 05 Czech Republic


------
To unsubscribe from <alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz> mailing list send message
'unsubscribe' in the body of message to <alsa-devel-request@alsa.jcu.cz>.
