Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] question regarding an alternative to theRME's PCI-to-Multiface card
From: Paul Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Tue Mar 12 2002 - 04:16:01 EET
>In the long run though I think firewire is the correct solution, but
>only when directly attaching the outboard hardware to the PC. That's
>where I think RME really screwed everyone over, by using "1394" cables
>and connectors and such, but not making it actual firewire. ~$300 for
>an interface board that should cost $20 is hard to swallow for me.
the "interface" board has a Xilinx FPGA that is doing, by my
understanding, a *lot* more than just handling ieee1394 data i/o in
the sense that a generic ieee1394 interface would. i will admit that
is not entirely clear that this is the case, but i believe all the
smarts on the H-DSP reside on the interface card, not in the "breakout
box". whether this is a good idea or not is clearly debatable, and i
admit, i would have preferred a solution that just delivered
ieee1394+some documented open audio+MIDI protocol to a generic
ieee1394 interface. i'm not going to scream that loudly though :)
>Designing viable firewire-based audio I/O is one my back-burner
>projects.
its been done. i had an NDA from Digital Harmony to write the driver
for their firewire-based interface, and then they went belly up. the
business side of firewire audio is much more challenging right now
than the technical side.
--p
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