On 3/30/19 10:37 AM, Max wrote:
On 30.03.19 04:52, Paul Davis wrote:
On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 4:57 PM Max <abonnements@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
...
fernando mentioned a post on "linux musicians" which describes each one.
for reference, I guess the thread is this one:
https://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18046
Yes, that is the one. Emailed to me by Anders Hellquist when he read my
lac paper (thanks!).
It's a rather long thread with some interesting tidbits here and there.
It has a LOT of information!
Someone even wrote a test program, but one has to be signed in to see
attachments on this forum.
Three takeaways from this thread:
1. AVB might be supported by the kernel at some point, which would allow
to use the AVB interfaces without the USB connection.
That is what I am waiting for... A very long time ago I managed to get
the OpenAVnu code compiled and got a linux machine to recognize and sync
with a Motu's clock - never got further (and that was not particularly
easy).
From the thread it appears that at least one user has working code for
streaming one AVB stream (8 channels) back and forth. Sounds fantastic.
There was also a paper in LAC about syncing jack with an AVB clock so
that is also a step in the right direction.
Still, for systems like the one in our Listening Room and Stage going
the USB way as an interface for end users seems like the best option. I
would probably not want to expose the whole AVB network behind the scenes...
See: https://github.com/L-Acoustics/avdecc for a multiplatform
implementation.
...
The old firmwares are downloadable here:
http://motu.com/techsupport/technotes/firmwarechangelog/
3. There is no way to change the number of channels through ALSA or via
the configuration panel of the web-interface. It's static.
Why can't I tell ALSA to use only the first 2, 4 whatever channels of
the device? I can only open the device if all channels are
connected. Is
this always like that or is that a limitation of MOTU's
implementation?
ALSA doesn't work that way. You open a device. You tell it how many
channels you want to use.
That's what I thought, but apparently it only succeeds to open an ALSA
device if the number of channels match.
That is true if you use the ALSA "hw" interface, which is what you want
to do if you use Jack (ie: direct access to the hardware with nothing in
between). The number of channels you open has to match what the hardware
can do.
If you use instead the ALSA "plughw" interface you could open it with
less channels and ALSA would insert stuff in the middle to account for
the discrepancy but you don't want to go down that rabbit hole with
Jack. You want direct access to the hardware.
Other stuff I found in the thread (or in comments from Anders):
With a usb kernel audio driver quirk you can access the proprietary usb
streaming endpoints (not class compliant) of the audio interface, but
that does not seem to help.
Another one is an incantation for switching the interface between
"proprietary mode" and "class compliant mode". That might explain why
sometimes a Linux laptop does not see the interface after a Mac has been
using it and probably also the other way around. When I hit this I never
had time to investigate. I would probably need a GUI exposed button to
fix this...
And probably other juicy stuff, I have to re-read the thread again... I
was busy at the time with other stuff. I have to sign up to be able to
see the patches and other stuff.
Anders emailed me a beta version of the firmware for the UltraLite that
him best performance - I think it did fix problems for someone that was
at LAC...
-- Fernando
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