[linux-audio-dev] Linux friendly, portable digital recording devices?

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Subject: [linux-audio-dev] Linux friendly, portable digital recording devices?
From: Ian Howard (ihoward_AT_mali.geekcorps.org)
Date: Mon Dec 27 2004 - 00:19:54 EET

Hey all,

We are looking for some portable digital recording devices with the
following criteria:

- very small
- durable
- near $100 ($100-150)
- usb compatible
- linux + windows friendly
- mic-in with a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio
- descent quality recordings
- battery powered

We intend to distribute about 10 - 20 of these units to radio
journalists in Mali, whom will use these devices to collect material for
their programs which they can then edit in Audacity and broadcast on the
air.

We are looking at devices such as the iRiver 190T

Any one have any experience with such devices, in particular using them
with linux?

Ian

On Sun, 2004-12-26 at 12:06 -0500,
linux-audio-dev-request_AT_music.columbia.edu wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Re: Tascam US428 Continued hangups (Spencer Russell)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 02:09:21 -0800
> From: Spencer Russell <Spencer.Russell_AT_oberlin.edu>
> Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Tascam US428 Continued hangups
> To: linux-audio-dev_AT_music.columbia.edu
> Message-ID: <20041226100921.GA12396_AT_slingshot>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On Fri, Dec 24, 2004 at 12:05:07PM -0500, Rui Nuno Capela wrote:
> >
> > ...
> > device. It was probably this very one that was aunting you before. After
> > some attention and furious alsa-bugtracker exchange, Karten Wiese has been
> > able to solve this, even tought he's got no OHCI hardware near him.
> >
>
> I was watching that thread a little, because my symptoms were
> very similar. Strangely, though, I have a UHCI based card, so I'm
> not sure why I was seeing similar symtoms.
>
> > Then Karsten did it again. He crafted a special jackd alsa/usx2y backend
> > which enabled the so-called raw-usb mode of operation. And it was just
> > yesterday I have proposed the merge into the official alsa backend driver
> > on the jackit-devel list. With this new experimental stuff, one can run
> > jackd in realtime with pretty lowest-latency parameters, without aural
> > artifacts (i.e. crackling). AFAICT this is a greatest breakthrough on the
> > USB audio arena, so I would think twice about getting rid of your US428 ;)
> >
>
> I'm having a bit of trouble with the usx2y backend to jackd. I
> bastardized the jackd-us2xy rpm to make a nice deb file, but
> jackd still says "unknown driver 'usx2y'". Even downloading and
> compiling the source, and running it directly from the directory
> it ws compiled into. And does it automatically use the rawusb
> interface? What's the advantage of using the usx2y driver as
> opposed to the alsa driver?
>
> > So my recipe goes like this:
> >
> > 1. Have REALTIME_PREEMPT on the kernel config.
> >
> > 2. Make sure you have loaded the latest snd-usb-usx2y>=0.8.7.1 (as of
> > latest alsa-kernel cvs).
> >
> > 3. Tune the RT priorities (SCHED_FIFO) of the time-audio critical IRQ
> > threads:
> > 90 - timer (IRQ 0)
> > 80 - rtc (IRQ 8)
> > 70 - snd (or whatever your PCI soundcard will hook, usually IRQ 5)
> > 60 - usb (ohci_hcd or uhici_hcd, usually IRQ 10)
> > You should have schedutils installed (chrt) for this exercise.
> >
> > 4. Load the snd-usb-usx2y with the nrpacks parameter set for:
> > a. high-stability: nrpacks=4
> > b. low-latency: nrpacks=1
> > Anyway, be advised that you can only run the forementioned "rawusb"
> > mode if you set on this later one (modprobe snd-usb-usx2y nrpacks=1).
> >
> > Run your jackd command line (or qjackctl;) as usual, but given the above
> > priority tunning, you should try e.g. jackd -R -P60 ...
> >
> Thanks a lot for this detailed info! I recompiled the newest
> snd-usb-usx2y driver, but how do I tune RT priorities? I got the
> schedutils package, but I'm having trouble finding details on how
> to use chrt.
>
> Thanks again for the info.
> -spencer
>
>
> ------------------------------
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>
> End of linux-audio-dev Digest, Vol 15, Issue 46
> *********************************************** 

-- 
Ian Howard

IESC/Geekcorps Mali "les volontaires de l'informatique"
coordinateur de programme
--------------------------------------------------
geekcorps (http://maligeekcorps.org)
ihoward_AT_geekcorps.org
bureau/office:  +223 221 49 43
mobile:         +223 640 30 40

Porte 1085, Rue 240, Bamako, Mali

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