On Thu, 2006-12-21 at 16:47 -0800, Ken Restivo wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > That's bleak. > > I bought a Mac Mini to do audio on. It's got the dreaded hda_intel chip. > > But with kernel 2.4.18 it works fine. Fine meaning: there's still some xruns, but not enough to slow me down too much. > > Right now I haven't been able to get it to actually *record*, but since I'm mostly doing all-digital stuff right now it hasn't gotten in my way. Yet. > > I suppose if I do any serious work I'll get one of those firewire audio external boxes like the FA-66, which aren't too expensive last I checked. no experience with any one HDA setup can be transferred to any other. the intel HDA specification is barely a real specification. it has left enough "wiggle room" that the drivers for "HDA" are actually a hodge-podge (technical term) of random fixes to patch up areas left insufficiently defined. there are dozens of HDA configurations - each one of them is unique. and tomorrow, when apple, or HP, or sony or fujitsu or whoever release a new laptop, there will likely be one more. this works on linux because the h/w manufacturer hacks the base driver supplied by intel and includes it in the windows kit shipped with the laptop/desktop. on linux, they do nothing (of course) so it comes down to the user finding out that it doesn't work, and having the guts/know-how to track down what register mappings have been changed, which pinouts have been reordered and then trying to get a new quirk/fix added to the HDA driver. its deeply pathetic, and i think that intel should be absolutely ashamed of what they have done. even creative did a better job than this, without even trying to: the SB16 was a standard; not very good, but a standard nevertheless. --p
