Re: [LAU] PITA: RME HDSPe AIO

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 09:27 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
> On 06/06/2011 03:16 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Ralf Mardorf<ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> > <SNIP>
> >>
> >> Any hints how I get this card working are welcome.
> >>
> >
> > Welcome to Linux audio I think...
>
> just as a small reminder before we all go misty-eyed over the horrible
> state of linux audio: in the universe i live in, there's this basic
> assumption that hardware vendors should care for proper driver and
> userspace support, because they want to sell their gear.
> if they don't, that's their problem, take your money elsewhere.
> this whole situation where people hack up drivers in their free time to
> open markets to ignorant vendors is totally ass backwards. it's what
> we've gotten used to, and i'm happy to have open-source drivers for the
> pro gear i have to use, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that
> it's all fine and dandy this way.
>
> don't whine here, whine on <vendor mailing list>.
>
> > Anyway, as this device is part of the HDSP family - I own an HDSP 9652
> > - I can say that if you don't successfully run hdspconf& hdspmixer
> > you'll almost certainly never produce sound.
>
> hdspconf won't support the new AIO and raydats afaik, use alsamixer
> instead. i've tried to hack it a bit and actually got it to support the
> hdsp madi, but it's messy and not really worth the effort imho...
> but not rocket science either.
> the problem is that everyone i talked to told me fltk is on its way out,
> fast, and i don't really feel motivated to redo everything in gtk when i
> only have two rme cards and can do everything i need with alsamixer, if
> less conveniently.
>
> > The HDSP family has a
> > rather large and somewhat daunting internal audio router and without
> > running the mixer and configuring it nothing is routed and sound goes
> > nowhere.
>
> i know for certain that hdspmixer supports at least the hdsp pci devices
> and the hdspm madi pcie, and i'm pretty sure it also supports the AIO
> and raydat.
>
> > There is no command line way to access the router, TTBOMK and
> > ONLY *MY* OPINION, but with Thomas Charbonnel long gone from Linux
> > audio development I'm unsure whether anyone has the depth of knowledge
> > and, frankly, interest in tackling the tasks to do anything new in
> > this area.
>
> i guess the problem is that rme are a bit difficult to work with -
> there's no-one in particular you could talk to, it's just a bunch of
> freelance designer hotshots and a marketing department. they have been
> helpful with specs on and off (sometimes quite late, as in the case of
> the firefaces), but there has been no established relationship to any
> team of driver maintainers...
>
> > It would be great to find another developer with the interest that we
> > had when Thomas was here. I'll work with anyone wanting to do
> > development by testing code here, as I did with Thomas.
>
> get in touch with adi. do you have any of the recent pcie rme devices?
>
> > That said, it's possible that all you need is a new PCI device IDs
> > added to the existing HDSP driver and possibly it would work. Not
> > sure.
>
> i heard the raydat and aio drivers basically work. there used to be the
> problem that they would only run at 1024 frames, but looking at the
> commit log, adi tackled that one a while ago.
>
> frankly, with bug reports like "As expected, now ALSA is broken.", what
> do you expect? that's really a huge waste of time. i've seen alsa break
> in a hundred shiny different ways from the subtle to the spectacular,
> and unless the OP gets his act together and provides some real
> information, PEBKAC is what i'll be assuming.

I'm missing the information how to build alsa-tools-1.0.24.1. If it
can't be done by ./configure, make, make install, than IMO there should
be a README.txt or INSTALL.txt mention the needed commands.

I subscribed to Alsa users yesterday, no mails for that list, neither
regarding to my request, nor any other emails.

I read about the HDSPe AIO and Linux before I ordered the card, yes 1024
frames, but who cares about a fix latency? I care about a good sound
quality, sync and jitter.

What professional cards do work with Linux? I don't want to use
TeraaTec, M-Audio and other equipment that doesn't provide the sound
quality I need.

The HDSP 9632 should be ok with Linux and it doesn't cost as much as a
HDSPe AIO. But how long will mobos ship with PCI slots? On my very old
mobo there are only 2 PCI slots.

When searching for a new 'professional' sound card I got the information
or misinformation that most cards are firewire devices and firewire
should be without issues only for Mac. Even Windows users reported that
firewire is tricky.

If the sound quality of the AIO should fit to my needs, I'll reconsider
NOT to return it. I guess in two years ALSA ex 1.0.24 will be part of
every distro.

The problem is that with each Linux upgrade X becomes more and more
pain. I'm happy that my monitor settings are ok for all installs on my
machine, but for all new installs the mouse wheel randomly and very
seldom works, usually it don't work. I've got no issues with old Linux
installs regarding to X (I still kept one old install).

Setting up X is a PITA and using common distros PA was a PITA regarding
to my old Envy24 cards, Debian doesn't use PA, that's why I switched.

It's no problem to fight one issue, it's no problem ti fight two issues,
but at some point, let's say 3 or 4 real serious issues, it becomes to
time consuming.

There's nothing bad with Linux software for audio, but since 64 Studio
is gone I don't know any 64-bit .deb distro that gives an audio
environment by default.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I now will try to compile by trial and error, perhaps I'm able to
compile alsa-tools.

By the way, I wonder about the meaning of the word "multimedia"
http://www.dict.cc/?s=multimedia
On Debian Linux it does mean "not about sound and video":

"This is a list for issues and feedback regarding the packages hosted
at
debian-multimedia.org and packaged by Christian Marillat.

I guess when you saw "multimedia" in the name you assumed it was about
sound and video, but it's actually not, sorry."

Well, two month ago I had a job, at this time it would have been
impossible to waste that much time to set up a sound card ;). Perhaps
next month I'll have a new job and again less time to solve such issues
and by the way, if needed, then I have to return the card within less
than 20 days.

Cheers!

Ralf

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Received on Mon Jun 6 12:15:02 2011