Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: GPL Audio Hardware

On Tue, 04 Apr, 2006 at 04:25AM -0500, Richard Smith spake thus:
> On 4/4/06, Dmitry Baikov <dsbaikov@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
>
> > You are right in your comments, but please, take it easier.
> >
> > Richard and OGP company have no illusions about them being audio professionals.
> > And yes, it's more useful to look at RME, Echo, M-Audio, but keep it
> > cool, please ;)
>
> Its ok. I was prepared for the responses. I think the candid
> opinions have value, keep em comming. I'll point Tim at the RME,
> Echo, and M-Audio to look at as examples.
>
> Basically OGD1 is a big FPGA board with 256Mb of DDR RAM and some nice
> clean high speed analog and digital ouputs. The question Tim is
> asking (audio cluelessness aside) are:

My personal views:
 
> Can the audio community use such a board?

I'd love to see something like this, but at a reasonable cost. I have
a grant application in at the moment to work on something related...

> Will they help in producing the feature set and design?

Of course. We like talking.

> What features would it need?

Off the top of my head:

1. Samprerate conversion - fastfastfast!

2. Allocatable memory. It would be nice to be able to allocate memory
   on the card as long as it came with some benefits:
      i. Fast access
      ii. Playing straight from card-ram to outputs
      ii. Others...

3. Convolution. And/or frequency domain filtering.

4. Audio-specific instructions sound good, but I don't know exactly
   what they would be, yet. Start with a point operation, so we can
   do things like gain adjustments fast and maybe wave shaping?

5. Something like shader for audio? Am I dreaming?
   
6. JACK in hardware? With the features above, this could be very nice.

> What would they pay for it?

As little as possible. I personally might manage 300 quid (600
dollars-ish). And we'd love you, of course. Physically, if it's as
good as I hope ;)

For me, if this cost $1000 upwards, it would just be another piece of
hardware to dream about owning.

James

-- 
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.  Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)