Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Emmanuel Kasper]

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Hello
With a couple of other french folks, we are building a kind of webshop
for Linux/FreeBSD compatible hardware. We will reference only devices
which work with a free driver, so no nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.
Based on the information found  on  the alsa wiki we plan to reference
the following sound devices:

M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
Terratec AUREON 5.1
M-Audio Fast Track usb
Hercules Muse Pocket LT
Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )

We would be also interested to indicate on each product description, if
the vendor of the product, or the chipset maker for that matters had
been helpful with developers trying to write a free driver. So for the
devices mentionned above, was any of the vendor helpful by providing
programming documentation or sample hardware ?

If yes we will mention it on the product description with an extra tag
like "programmer friendly"

Regards


-- 
Emmanuel Kasper
System Administrator
www.libera.cc
Find, compare, buy Linux & FreeBSD compatible hardware





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Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Takashi Iwai]

At Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:49:24 +0200,
Emmanuel Kasper wrote:
> 
> Hello
> With a couple of other french folks, we are building a kind of webshop
> for Linux/FreeBSD compatible hardware. We will reference only devices
> which work with a free driver, so no nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.
> Based on the information found  on  the alsa wiki we plan to reference
> the following sound devices:
> 
> M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
> Terratec AUREON 5.1
> M-Audio Fast Track usb
> Hercules Muse Pocket LT
> Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )
> 
> We would be also interested to indicate on each product description, if
> the vendor of the product, or the chipset maker for that matters had
> been helpful with developers trying to write a free driver. So for the
> devices mentionned above, was any of the vendor helpful by providing
> programming documentation or sample hardware ?

We have a good contact with M-Audio.  The above two devices were
provided once for testing by M-Audio indeed.

The datasheet is another question -- for USB devices, it's often
harder than PCI devices (by unknown reasons).

Terratec Aureon 5.1 (which model, BTW?) isn't well tested by
developers.  We had once good contact with Terratec, and lost again.

AFAIK, no one had a contact with Hercules.
I don't know about Ion.  Possibly Clemens had any contact?
But, if the USB device works "as is", then it's all fine, even without
a datasheet or a test device.  It means that the device is compliant
to USB-standard protocol.  The bad case is that the device requires
special vendor-specific protocols (often called "advanced mode").


HTH,

Takashi

Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Tobin Davis]

Just an addendum to this, I have had good support for most of the
on-board Intel HD audio codec vendors, most of which have been generous
enough to send me development boards, and most of them have their codec
specs posted on their web sites.  Unfortunately, lately I have been too
overwhelmed with other activities to do much more than read emails, but
I'm almost done with my degree program so I'll be jumping back into the
developers pool soon.

Tobin

On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 18:37 +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:

> At Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:49:24 +0200,
> Emmanuel Kasper wrote:
> > 
> > Hello
> > With a couple of other french folks, we are building a kind of webshop
> > for Linux/FreeBSD compatible hardware. We will reference only devices
> > which work with a free driver, so no nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.
> > Based on the information found  on  the alsa wiki we plan to reference
> > the following sound devices:
> > 
> > M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
> > Terratec AUREON 5.1
> > M-Audio Fast Track usb
> > Hercules Muse Pocket LT
> > Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )
> > 
> > We would be also interested to indicate on each product description, if
> > the vendor of the product, or the chipset maker for that matters had
> > been helpful with developers trying to write a free driver. So for the
> > devices mentionned above, was any of the vendor helpful by providing
> > programming documentation or sample hardware ?
> 
> We have a good contact with M-Audio.  The above two devices were
> provided once for testing by M-Audio indeed.
> 
> The datasheet is another question -- for USB devices, it's often
> harder than PCI devices (by unknown reasons).
> 
> Terratec Aureon 5.1 (which model, BTW?) isn't well tested by
> developers.  We had once good contact with Terratec, and lost again.
> 
> AFAIK, no one had a contact with Hercules.
> I don't know about Ion.  Possibly Clemens had any contact?
> But, if the USB device works "as is", then it's all fine, even without
> a datasheet or a test device.  It means that the device is compliant
> to USB-standard protocol.  The bad case is that the device requires
> special vendor-specific protocols (often called "advanced mode").
> 
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Takashi
> _______________________________________________
> Alsa-devel mailing list
> Alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
> http://mailman.alsa-project.org/mailman/listinfo/alsa-devel

-- 
Tobin Davis 


It's the thought, if any, that counts!

Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Clemens Ladisch]

> Emmanuel Kasper wrote:
> > We will reference only devices which work with a free driver, so no
> > nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.  Based on the information
> > found on the alsa wiki we plan to reference the following sound
> > devices:
> >
> > M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
> > Terratec AUREON 5.1
> > M-Audio Fast Track usb
> > Hercules Muse Pocket LT
> > Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )

Why only those?  All drivers in the ALSA tree are free.

Takashi Iwai wrote:
> I don't know about Ion.  Possibly Clemens had any contact?

No, all my drivers have been written with already-public datasheets or
using reverse engineering.


Regards,
Clemens

Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Emmanuel Kasper]

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Clemens Ladisch a écrit :
>> Emmanuel Kasper wrote:
>>> We will reference only devices which work with a free driver, so no
>>> nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.  Based on the information
>>> found on the alsa wiki we plan to reference the following sound
>>> devices:
>>>
>>> M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
>>> Terratec AUREON 5.1
>>> M-Audio Fast Track usb
>>> Hercules Muse Pocket LT
>>> Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )
> 
> Why only those?  All drivers in the ALSA tree are free.

Well right, now we rather try to find for each different consummer
scenario one or two working card ( like one 5.1 usb, one entry level 4
channels, one professional PCI card, possibly one USB speaker set )
We are not aiming at exhaustivity, we simply don't have the ressources.
It has also to be availaible new in the market and if possible also
working with FreeBSD.

> Takashi Iwai wrote:
>> I don't know about Ion.  Possibly Clemens had any contact?
> 
> No, all my drivers have been written with already-public datasheets or
> using reverse engineering.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Clemens
> 

lg.
-- 
Emmanuel Kasper
System Administrator
www.libera.cc
Find, compare, buy Linux & FreeBSD compatible hardware


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Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Emmanuel Kasper]

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Takashi Iwai a écrit :
> At Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:49:24 +0200,
> Emmanuel Kasper wrote:
>> Hello
>> With a couple of other french folks, we are building a kind of webshop
>> for Linux/FreeBSD compatible hardware. We will reference only devices
>> which work with a free driver, so no nvidia binary thingie or atheros
HAL.
>> Based on the information found  on  the alsa wiki we plan to reference
>> the following sound devices:
>>
>> M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
>> Terratec AUREON 5.1
>> M-Audio Fast Track usb
>> Hercules Muse Pocket LT
>> Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )
>>
>> We would be also interested to indicate on each product description, if
>> the vendor of the product, or the chipset maker for that matters had
>> been helpful with developers trying to write a free driver. So for the
>> devices mentionned above, was any of the vendor helpful by providing
>> programming documentation or sample hardware ?
>
> We have a good contact with M-Audio.  The above two devices were
> provided once for testing by M-Audio indeed.
>
> The datasheet is another question -- for USB devices, it's often
> harder than PCI devices (by unknown reasons).

Then I will label M-audio devices "friendly".

>
> Terratec Aureon 5.1 (which model, BTW?) isn't well tested by
> developers.  We had once good contact with Terratec, and lost again.

Sorry I dropped a part of the name.
The vendor name is Terratec AUREON 5.1 USB MKII.

> AFAIK, no one had a contact with Hercules.
> I don't know about Ion.  Possibly Clemens had any contact?
> But, if the USB device works "as is", then it's all fine, even without
> a datasheet or a test device.  It means that the device is compliant
> to USB-standard protocol.  The bad case is that the device requires
> special vendor-specific protocols (often called "advanced mode").

From what I have seen the Hercules Muse Pocket LT and the Ion TTUSB usb
turnable both work "as is".
I think I'm going to label "friendly" standard usb sound devices which
work "as is"  without requiring an entry in usbquirks.h
(which does not mean the opposite will mean automatically "unfriendly" )

Thanks for these informations and also for people who replied to me
off-list.

-- 
Emmanuel Kasper
System Administrator
www.libera.cc
Find, compare, buy Linux & FreeBSD compatible hardware


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Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Giuliano Pochini]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:49:24 +0200
Emmanuel Kasper <emmanuel@libera.cc> wrote:

> Hello
> With a couple of other french folks, we are building a kind of webshop
> for Linux/FreeBSD compatible hardware. We will reference only devices
> which work with a free driver, so no nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.
> Based on the information found  on  the alsa wiki we plan to reference
> the following sound devices:
> 
> M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
> Terratec AUREON 5.1
> M-Audio Fast Track usb
> Hercules Muse Pocket LT
> Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )

Add Echoaudio PCI and CARDBUS cards. They released the lowlevel part of
their driver under the LGPL and the firmware in binary only form with the
explicit permission to use it in the Linux kernel
(http://echoaudio.com/Downloads/Developer.php). They were helpful and sent
me a Gina3G when it was released. IIRC they also support the Freebob people
for the Audiofire cards.


--
Giuliano.

Re: Vendor support in Alsa Drivers

[Pieter Palmers]

Giuliano Pochini wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:49:24 +0200
> Emmanuel Kasper <emmanuel@libera.cc> wrote:
> 
>> Hello
>> With a couple of other french folks, we are building a kind of webshop
>> for Linux/FreeBSD compatible hardware. We will reference only devices
>> which work with a free driver, so no nvidia binary thingie or atheros HAL.
>> Based on the information found  on  the alsa wiki we plan to reference
>> the following sound devices:
>>
>> M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 (  snd-ice1712 driver )
>> Terratec AUREON 5.1
>> M-Audio Fast Track usb
>> Hercules Muse Pocket LT
>> Ion TTUSB usb turnable ( these 4 working with snd-usb-driver )
> 
> Add Echoaudio PCI and CARDBUS cards. They released the lowlevel part of
> their driver under the LGPL and the firmware in binary only form with the
> explicit permission to use it in the Linux kernel
> (http://echoaudio.com/Downloads/Developer.php). They were helpful and sent
> me a Gina3G when it was released. IIRC they also support the Freebob people
> for the Audiofire cards.

They did help out with the AudioFire's.

Greets,

Pieter Palmers
ffado.org