RME HDSPe Info/Question

RME HDSPe Info/Question

[ricman]

Howdy!

I would like to share a piece of information which I am hoping will
be helpful to the ALSA development community.  This information is
regarding the RME HDSP Multiface/Digiface family of products.  We
know from

  http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Vendor-RME

and

  http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-hdsp

that we have a PCI driver for Linux thanks to Paul Davis, Marcus
Andersson, Thomas Charbonnel (and probably others).  However, RME
recently came out with a new PCI Express (PCI-E) interface for
these products.

Here is where is gets interesting: I've been trying to ascertain
whether I should purchase the PCI-E HDSPe card for my Linux box.
I prayed to the RME gods on their forum and none other than
Matthias Carstens of RME responded that

  "The PCIe cards are fully downward compatible, so can be used
   even with the oldest Windows drivers. So I expect Linux to
   work with them too."
   (http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1031)

Is it possible that he is right?  Will the old PCI Linux driver
work just the same (or better) with the newer PCI-E card?  For
some reason I just naturally thought the PCI-E card would need
its own special driver.

Or is the only way to know to just buy and see if it works?  That
seem like an expensive way to find out...

Thanks!



       
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Re: RME HDSPe Info/Question

[Clemens Ladisch]

ricman wrote:
> Matthias Carstens of RME responded that
> 
>   "The PCIe cards are fully downward compatible, so can be used
>    even with the oldest Windows drivers. So I expect Linux to
>    work with them too."
> 
> Is it possible that he is right?

Yes.  On the software side, PCIe is compatible with PCI.


HTH
Clemens