4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Billy Biggs]

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:

> >  Drivers had better be forthcomming.  Yes, I'm talking about cards like
> >those, such as the Event Layla and Darla, etc.  Without them, it makes
> >Linux pretty useless as a multitrack platform...
> 
> the manufacturers of such cards don't have much of an interest in
> Linux. i did a little work at AES to try to change that, but its going
> to be a long uphill battle.

  Well, if there were a more powerful audio API, and applications that
took advantage of it, that would all change pretty quick...

> >  Well, at least pretty annoying.  Personally, I have two AudioPCI cards
> >and a dedicated MPU-401 card for MIDI.  Each of the AudioPCI cards have
> >two dsps, giving me four /dev/dsp devices.
> 
> if you had 2 4D-NX's, you'd have 64 openable (mono) channels for
> playback (*)...  is that enough for you ? :))) total cost $78+postage,
> plus you'd have two excellent MIDI interfaces as well.
> (*) but just 4 mono channels for recording, sigh.

  4D-NX seems to be just the chipset.  Which card are you referring to
here?  And, how does it get so many seperate openable channels?

  More importantly, would I be able to sync channels on the same sound
card?

--
Billy Biggs                         vektor@div8.net
http://www.div8.net/billy       wbiggs@uwaterloo.ca

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Jaroslav Kysela]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Billy Biggs wrote:

>   4D-NX seems to be just the chipset.  Which card are you referring to
> here?  And, how does it get so many seperate openable channels?

32 stereo channels, mixing is performed by hardware

>   More importantly, would I be able to sync channels on the same sound
> card?

Yes, with the new PCM v2 ALSA API (currently in development - I welcome
testers).

1) load the playback buffers
2) send SYNC GO command to the driver

You may create more syncronized groups, of course.

						Jaroslav

-----
Jaroslav Kysela <perex@suse.cz>
SuSE Linux    http://www.suse.com
ALSA project  http://www.alsa-project.org

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Paul Barton-Davis]

>> >  Drivers had better be forthcomming.  Yes, I'm talking about cards like
>> >those, such as the Event Layla and Darla, etc.  Without them, it makes
>> >Linux pretty useless as a multitrack platform...
>> 
>> the manufacturers of such cards don't have much of an interest in
>> Linux. i did a little work at AES to try to change that, but its going
>> to be a long uphill battle.
>
>  Well, if there were a more powerful audio API, and applications that
>took advantage of it, that would all change pretty quick...

actually, no.

i've had many discussions with different companies. the problem has
*never* been "Oh, Linux's audio API isn't worth us developing
for". Its also never been "Well, what applications are there ?"
(remember, most of these companies simply *assume* the existence of
apps, or alternatively, write their own). 

Instead, its a combination of:

      * "some other people wrote a Linux driver for our board and it sucked"
      * "we don't have enough programmers to do that"
      * "we don't have any written documentation to give you guys -
         we wrote the driver by having the software group sit in with
	 the hardware group"
      * "we think our hardware's proprietary secrets will be revealed
         if there is a source code driver"
      * "Linux ? Is that like Cakewalk ?"

>  4D-NX seems to be just the chipset.  Which card are you referring to
>here? 

go to www.hoontech.com and look at the SoundWave NX.

--p

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Dan Hollis]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
>       * "we don't have enough programmers to do that"

If the drivers are being written for them by volunteers, I dont see how
this is relevant.

>       * "we don't have any written documentation to give you guys -
>          we wrote the driver by having the software group sit in with
> 	 the hardware group"

This should be a warning sign to anyone thinking of purchasing their
hardware. If a company cant be bothered to internally document the
hardware, what happens if key engineers leave the company? Oh dear, their
project is *permanently screwed*, which means zero support for end users.
This is no way to run a company.

>       * "we think our hardware's proprietary secrets will be revealed
>          if there is a source code driver"

Uh, isnt this what patents are for? If someone reverse engineers their
card, they are *completely screwed* unless they have patent protection.

-Dan

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[David Olofson]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> Instead, its a combination of:
> 
>       * "some other people wrote a Linux driver for our board and it sucked"
>       * "we don't have enough programmers to do that"
>       * "we don't have any written documentation to give you guys -
>          we wrote the driver by having the software group sit in with
> 	 the hardware group"
>       * "we think our hardware's proprietary secrets will be revealed
>          if there is a source code driver"
>       * "Linux ? Is that like Cakewalk ?"

Another one:

	* "Can you give an estimate of how many Linux users would
	   be interested in buying our card, if there was a driver?"

That's a tough one... How many users do you get without real cards?
And how many real cards and applications do you get without lots of
users...?

Well, it's our own "fault"; this is a Free/Open Source world, and
*we* have to get things moving if anything is to happen. Therefore,
an API that makes it easier for us to reuse code, and for users to
integrate existing applications into working solutions, will probably
help a lot.

Would IBM, Corel, SyBase and co have cared about Linux if it wasn't
already a big player in the server field? Probably not... They've
been hurt by MS and other concurents too many times to jump into
something like Linux, before they see that it actually works in real
life.

I'm afraid we have to get Linux boxes into studios. Before that 
happens, performance superior by orders of magnitude to that of
Windows and MacOS, is little but exciting news for the techies.


//David


 ·A·U·D·I·A·L·I·T·Y·   P r o f e s s i o n a l   L i n u x   A u d i o
-  - ------------------------------------------------------------- -  -
    ·Rock Solid                                      David Olofson:
    ·Low Latency    www.angelfire.com/or/audiality   ·Audio Hacker
    ·Plug-Ins            audiality@swipnet.se        ·Linux Advocate
    ·Open Source                                     ·Singer/Composer

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Paul Barton-Davis]

>>       * "we don't have enough programmers to do that"
>
>If the drivers are being written for them by volunteers, I dont see how
>this is relevant.

if they had a driver written for them by 4Front, and it had problems,
their desire to have volunteers do another one is low. i won't name
the company that had this problem, but they are a real soundcard company.

>>       * "we don't have any written documentation to give you guys -
>>          we wrote the driver by having the software group sit in with
>> 	 the hardware group"
>
>This should be a warning sign to anyone thinking of purchasing their
>hardware. If a company cant be bothered to internally document the
>hardware, what happens if key engineers leave the company? Oh dear, their
>project is *permanently screwed*, which means zero support for end users.
>This is no way to run a company.

Yamaha (the company that this quote comes from) seems to be doing
quite well :)

>Uh, isnt this what patents are for? If someone reverse engineers their
>card, they are *completely screwed* unless they have patent protection.

and the cost of a patent is ? look, there's very little truly clever
stuff in these cards, and what is patented is often stupid (est told
me last week about someone who has patented putting an LFO in hardware
on a soundcard with a wavetable synth). most soundcard technologies
don't last more than a few years, and investing the X-thousand dollars
in seeking patent protection for a nifty hack that will be irrelevant
in that time is pretty unjustifiable for most things. security for
obscurity really does work when you only want it for a little while ;)

i think david's point is an important one that i didn't mention, and
he's right that the only thing, in the end, that most of the companies
are going to respond to is more than a couple of studios saying "we
run linux - we want to buy your cards/devices and there are no drivers".

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Dan Hollis]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> >>       * "we don't have enough programmers to do that"
> >If the drivers are being written for them by volunteers, I dont see how
> >this is relevant.
> if they had a driver written for them by 4Front, and it had problems,
> their desire to have volunteers do another one is low. i won't name
> the company that had this problem, but they are a real soundcard company.

Still irrelevant to the *statement being made*, which is "*we* dont have
enough programmers to do that". Why has the number of programmers *they*
have, have anything to do with us volunteers writing a driver for them for
free? *boggle*.

> >>       * "we don't have any written documentation to give you guys -
> >>          we wrote the driver by having the software group sit in with
> >> 	 the hardware group"
> >This should be a warning sign to anyone thinking of purchasing their
> >hardware. If a company cant be bothered to internally document the
> >hardware, what happens if key engineers leave the company? Oh dear, their
> >project is *permanently screwed*, which means zero support for end users.
> >This is no way to run a company.
> Yamaha (the company that this quote comes from) seems to be doing
> quite well :)

No, Yamaha *does* have documentation on the native PCI stuff. They just
wont release it.

> >Uh, isnt this what patents are for? If someone reverse engineers their
> >card, they are *completely screwed* unless they have patent protection.
> and the cost of a patent is ? look, there's very little truly clever
> stuff in these cards, and what is patented is often stupid (est told
> me last week about someone who has patented putting an LFO in hardware
> on a soundcard with a wavetable synth). most soundcard technologies
> don't last more than a few years, and investing the X-thousand dollars
> in seeking patent protection for a nifty hack that will be irrelevant
> in that time is pretty unjustifiable for most things. security for
> obscurity really does work when you only want it for a little while ;)

I guess what we need are some PCI snooper hardware so we can start putting
the shits up (various unnamed companies). Start posting reverse engineered
specs and stuff will surely get their attention ;)

Didnt RMS say that the FSF was going to start doing some reverse
engineering with PCI snoopers?

> i think david's point is an important one that i didn't mention, and
> he's right that the only thing, in the end, that most of the companies
> are going to respond to is more than a couple of studios saying "we
> run linux - we want to buy your cards/devices and there are no drivers".

Im more concerned about chip vendors than card manufacturers. If we
convince the chip vendor to release docs then theres really nothing a card
manufacturer can do to stop us.

We really only have three problematic chip vendors here - Yamaha, Aureal,
and Creative Labs. Although Creative Labs may be coming around finally
with the emu10k stuff.

The trend toward FPGA makes things interesting, of course.

-Dan

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Paul Barton-Davis]

>Still irrelevant to the *statement being made*, which is "*we* dont have
>enough programmers to do that". Why has the number of programmers *they*
>have, have anything to do with us volunteers writing a driver for them for
>free? *boggle*.

they don't *want* volunteers writing drivers for them. period. end of story.

>No, Yamaha *does* have documentation on the native PCI stuff. They just
>wont release it.

i have been told by one senior level management guy at yamaha and one
senior programming guy from their main japanese plant that there is
*NO* documentation for the DSP Factory.

>Im more concerned about chip vendors than card manufacturers. If we
>convince the chip vendor to release docs then theres really nothing a card
>manufacturer can do to stop us.

i have the "full specs" to the (ancient) YSS225 FX processor from
yamaha. its installed on the Tropez+. the specs are useless because it
has downloaded microcode to set it up, and they only document 5
microcode programs. Yamaha wrote a special one for Turtle Beach, and
neither they nor Yamaha appear have any record of what it used the dsp
memory locations for.

i've used dosemu to decode part of it, and reverse engineered the
windows FX driver too, but the end result is a GUI with 512 buttons
that inc/dec values in a DSP location to let me try to understand what
it does. since many memory locations' function is tightly coupled with
several others, its a pretty hopeless case. i did manage to find where
the global stereo echo delay time was set, but that was all.

you could argue that this means that we don't have the specs, but
Yamaha certainly doesn't see it that way.

--p

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Dan Hollis]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> >Still irrelevant to the *statement being made*, which is "*we* dont have
> >enough programmers to do that". Why has the number of programmers *they*
> >have, have anything to do with us volunteers writing a driver for them for
> >free? *boggle*.
> they don't *want* volunteers writing drivers for them. period. end of story.

If thats what they wanted, why didnt they just say it. Stating it that way
is purposely deceitful.

> >No, Yamaha *does* have documentation on the native PCI stuff. They just
> >wont release it.
> i have been told by one senior level management guy at yamaha and one
> senior programming guy from their main japanese plant that there is
> *NO* documentation for the DSP Factory.

I received a statement from one of their japanese engineers that they *do*
have documentation for their native PCI audio block for the YMF724 and
YMF744, but that it was only released to OEMs and hardware integrators.

So we have conflicting statements from the same company. Not too suprising
really.

> >Im more concerned about chip vendors than card manufacturers. If we
> >convince the chip vendor to release docs then theres really nothing a card
> >manufacturer can do to stop us.
> i have the "full specs" to the (ancient) YSS225 FX processor from
> yamaha. its installed on the Tropez+. the specs are useless because it
> has downloaded microcode to set it up, and they only document 5
> microcode programs. Yamaha wrote a special one for Turtle Beach, and
> neither they nor Yamaha appear have any record of what it used the dsp
> memory locations for.
> i've used dosemu to decode part of it, and reverse engineered the
> windows FX driver too, but the end result is a GUI with 512 buttons
> that inc/dec values in a DSP location to let me try to understand what
> it does. since many memory locations' function is tightly coupled with
> several others, its a pretty hopeless case. i did manage to find where
> the global stereo echo delay time was set, but that was all.
> you could argue that this means that we don't have the specs, but
> Yamaha certainly doesn't see it that way.

Well one would have to weigh the effort of reverse engineering it against
the gains. Is there any point reverse engineering such ancient hardware?
Compared to eg reverse engineering the emu10k or aureal chips.

FWIW the SAM9407 documentation was pretty inadequate but gerd rausch
managed to come up with a pretty decent driver anyway.

-Dan

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[John Littler]

 Paul Barton-Davis spake thusly<pbd@Op.Net>:
[x] 
> i think david's point is an important one that i didn't mention, and
> he's right that the only thing, in the end, that most of the companies
> are going to respond to is more than a couple of studios saying "we
> run linux - we want to buy your cards/devices and there are no drivers".

That's one thing altho they're more likely to be saying "we want to run
linux because ..." - anyone running linux right now in a professional
studio in other than an experimental way would be thought to be out of
their minds given that travelling engineers/producers expect to see
the familiar software "faces".

IMHO the greatest hope we have for the near term for software
anyway is Fear! If Cubase thinks Logic is doing a port or visa versa,
they'll be off and running. I suspect that some high-end sound card drivers
would follow on this. 

New killer apps in Linux audio software could drive this too but I
think the process would take longer - the software has to get out
there, be recognised for what it is, be talked about etc.

I think a survey is in order! - software and drivers...
asking what stage they're at with linux. Something like ...

-eh? what's Linux?
-we're keeping a close eye on Linux developments
-we're doing a feasability study
-we're working on a port right now
-it's out next week!

Anyone who has particular people they'd like to see surveyed
please email me... Likewise anyone with relevant email addresses that get
to real people. I'll put the results up on Linux MusicStation
including those who didn't answer. 
tt
John

-- 
http://linuxmusic.cjb.net

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Paul Barton-Davis]

>> >Still irrelevant to the *statement being made*, which is "*we* dont have
>> >enough programmers to do that". Why has the number of programmers *they*
>> >have, have anything to do with us volunteers writing a driver for them for
>> >free? *boggle*.
>> they don't *want* volunteers writing drivers for them. period. end of story.
>
>If thats what they wanted, why didnt they just say it. Stating it that way
>is purposely deceitful.

the fault is more likely in my wording of it. i wasn't trying to quote
directly. the company concerned has just been burned by having a 3rd
party write drivers for it. i don't think they were deceitful with me,
i just didn't present a very accurate picture of what they said.

>Well one would have to weigh the effort of reverse engineering it against
>the gains. Is there any point reverse engineering such ancient hardware?
>Compared to eg reverse engineering the emu10k or aureal chips.

what do you think the expected lifetime of any of the current
generation of chips is, given how long every previous equivalent has
lasted ? if we're reverse engineering a chip more than 18mths after
its first use in a PC soundcard, i'd say we might well be wasting our
time, in the long haul.

>FWIW the SAM9407 documentation was pretty inadequate but gerd rausch
>managed to come up with a pretty decent driver anyway.

well, mine works just fine. its just that the non-linear relationships
between the memory locations on the DSP make it more or less useless
to try to use the driver to alter the operation of the downloaded
microprogram unless you're interested in random FX :) instead, you get
the DSP in something close to passthru mode.

--p

Re: 4D-NXs (was Re: Sync Issues)

[Dan Hollis]

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> >Well one would have to weigh the effort of reverse engineering it against
> >the gains. Is there any point reverse engineering such ancient hardware?
> >Compared to eg reverse engineering the emu10k or aureal chips.
> what do you think the expected lifetime of any of the current
> generation of chips is, given how long every previous equivalent has
> lasted ? if we're reverse engineering a chip more than 18mths after
> its first use in a PC soundcard, i'd say we might well be wasting our
> time, in the long haul.

The Cirrus Logic chips have been around a long time. The ESS chips
have been around a long time too. The Creative Labs stuff has been around
for more than 10 years. If these chipsets would have had to be reverse
engineered, it would definitely not have been a waste of time since the
data would still be useful today.

Many chipsets go through incremental improvements (eg CS42xx, ESS1xxx) so
reverse engineering one may prove to be useful later since future chips
may be (mostly) backwards-compatible, with a few changes. I suspect this
is the case with the YMF7xx chips and maybe even the AU8xxx ones.

Definitely the YMF7xx chips and the DS-1x architecture look like theyre
going to be around for some time.

-Dan