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Hardware

Aureal to release Linux drivers/source code 99

Posted by Hemos from the another-vendor-on-the-side-of-mom-&-apple-pie dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to an article at GA-Source, Aureal Semiconductor will be releasing Linux drivers for their sound cards "much sooner than you think" along with the source code. " Excellent - coming on the heels of the Soundblaster announcement, things are going to be sounding much better.
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Aureal to release Linux drivers/source code More

Aureal to release Linux drivers/source code

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  • This is GREAT!!! I've been looking at buying a new PC, but the only soundcard the manfacturer would bundle is from Aureal. Needless to say, I didn't like the idea that I wouldn't have sound under Linux, my primary OS. Hopefully, these drivers will be available in OSS/Free, not just the retail version of OSS, and in ALSA as well. Go Linux!!!
  • Couple of quick questions. First do you have any estimated time of when this driver will be able to play movies full screen? And the last question will Creative be porting any of there applications to linux like the DVD player or Wave editor? Just thought I'd ask since you seem to have a little insight with them :)
    Natas
  • And to think, I emailed them about this just last Saturday. Their reply:


    Hello,

    There are plans to support other operating systems besides Windows 9x and Windows NT. Currently, we are working on WDM drivers, but plans are already underway on working with different companies on Linux and BeOS drivers.

    4Front Technologies are working on drivers for the Vortex 1 and 2 chipsets under Linux through their OpenSound package. We are also working with other groups on supplying more open-source Linux drivers, which we hope to have available towards the end of 1999. We have also been in contact with Be on getting support for the Vortex chipsets, and hopefully will follow through on that shortly.

    There are definite plans for these drivers, however, and there are no guarantees.

    There is no planned support for Windows 3.x, OS/2, or the Macintosh OS at this time.

    Regards,

    Aureal Customer Support Services


    MB

    Ok then. Aside from obviously being somewhat of a form letter, it does at least appear that Aureal is serious about this. It's quite a change from a few months ago, when I emailed them and they said basically if you want Linux drivers, look at the opensound group and they might have a beta version later on, and if you want any specs, get lost.

    I'm guessing they've been getting pestered quite a bit about this. Now, if I could only get digital-in on my card (a Vortex 2 based Xitel Storm Platinum), I'd be in heaven! I know there's an I2S input on the pin expansion header that the platinum has, maybe with open source drivers we can hack on digital input.

    -Ed
  • I have the same setup and have noticed some of what you described on a few 128kb/s MP3's, but not on any 160's or 192's. I'm using Win98 with the latest drivers, WinAMP, and an MDS-JE510. Remember that the MP3 stream is uncompressed on the fly when you listen to it or redirect its output to a file or audio device.

    Your recommendation is good if you're wanting to record stuff that you have the uncompressed source of, but I like to be able to create a pick list of whatever MP3s I want and record a custom MD!

    I would like to be able to do this under the BeOS - if the Maui release doesn't include complete drivers (digital out, MIDI) for the Vortex2 cards I will probably ignore it. Sick of waiting.
  • These days, it seems that there are lots of companies that are releasing their drivers/software on linux.

    Some are releasing the source code, others are releasing binaries. What ever their motives are? Anyways, this is probably just the start.

    May I suggest that /. have a new section for this stuff instead of just having it part of the news.

    It is nice to know that more and more companies are releasing their products for linux. But the novelty wears out really fast.

    Also it would be nice if the section had a counter of the number of companies that released software and also a ranking by /. readers about how committed these companies are to Linux. ( Are they doing it only to help their stock or are they big time penguin fans? The Penguin Meter )
  • I like the .sig EMIL John =:->
  • where does it say open source in the article you say you got it from? Linux only drivers are useless to a BSD user like myself. and i think people forget how many of us there are.
  • well, quite a few printers are supported, I have epson 740 (I hope I got the number right) which is fairly OK cheap printer and it is supported (ghostscript). other epson printers are supported as well. maybe not all of them but I don't see the problem in this area. simply check wich printer is supported and buy one of those.

    erik
  • I heard Aureal was working on Be drivers. There's no need to port their linux drivers
  • I'm not the developer - I'm just the email-cut-n-paster. Take a look at the package, the developer emails are in there.
  • At the risk of just being a "me too" I have to throw my 2p in here. I've got an Aureal card in this machine and my one at home and I'm very pleased with them both as a user and as a developer.

    These days, as well as being the first to do "true" 3D positional audio (using HRTFs, not inter-aural delays), they also do WaveTracing, which noone else does.

    This means that you can pass them a simplified set of world geometry (eg a collision mesh -- rough boxes around the more complex geometry sent to the video card) and assign those polygons properties such as sound absorbtion (think "tissue paper" vs "concrete block) and reflectivity ("sound booth" vs "metal"), and it will model that acoustic environment to provide the correct echoes, reverb effects, and so on.

    Currently, other 3D cards don't do this, they either have no environmental support at all, or they can perform a sort of "canned" effect that's just blanket-applied. Think of the difference between depth-of-field focussing effects automatically calculated based on depth information and geometry, and just applying a pre-defined gaussian blur to an entire image in photoshop, and you'll get the difference.

    You can also supply parameters such as atmospheric absorbtion, which gives you that "foggy day" damp quality (if you want it, of course). Oh yeah, and doppler shift on moving objects. And yet I get to deal with people who buy more expensive, less powerful cards because they're "made by Creative Labs so I know they're going to work with anything". Heh. It's not even true -- read the small print on a SoundBlaster Live box and it says "almost 100% compatible with..." -- I found that kinda shocking myself, surely they should be able to be 100% compatible with their own cards? Oh well.

  • Why is it so abhorrent for some people to pay money for good quality drivers, just because they don't give away their source? I didn't feel bad paying my $30 for 4Front drivers.

    Because I already paid money for my hardware. Why should I be required to spend money just to _use_ it? I purchased my A3D card for less that 4FrontTech wants just for the drivers...
  • of course, this new comes about a week after I shelled out $30 for 4Front's software for my machine at work - oh well - c'est la vie :)
  • DirectSound3D was hacked together by the engineers at Aureal. They did it, they wrote it, MS used it. At least that's how it was explained to me back at WinHEC. (Ironic. The only convention I've ever paid money to attend was WinHEC '97. Definitely was worth it though, if only to see the Rendition guy get disturbingly flustered when I started comparing their product to the Voodoo solutions coming out of 3DFX. Incidentally, this was also the first the world had seen of the Riva 128, A.K.A. the return of nVidia. nVidia was the first 3D card manufacturer for PCs, but their card was so slow that it was better just to operate in software. Telling people nVidia was coming back from the grave was like announcing PC Chips as the one of the higher quality manufacturers in the industry...heh, wait a second...)

    As for me, I use a SB Live Value because I compose music [mp3.com] and the SB Live's MIDI support is light years beyond anything the rest of the industry has supplied us with. I'm truly looking forward to seeing what audio hackers can do with the power of that DSP.

    I've still always lusted after a Vortex 2, though, and might just grab one for the hell of it.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • More hardware support for Linux is always good! I wonder if Be will be allowed to use these as references for BeOS drivers
  • In any case, I'll be glad to finally have a modern soundcard with good sound quality which is supported by Linux. That and a port of Impulse Tracker would make me a very happy porcupine. (Yes, I know there's other Linux trackers, but they only implement part of XM at best. I need at least the ability to import ITs in a way that accounts for NNAs and I would much prefer having resonant filtering and MIDI available.)

    I don't know about you, but I'd kill for a port of ScreamTracker. Started out with 2.2 I think on an old 386 with the PC Squeeker... moved on to a GUS MAX on a little 486 which sits beside my big-ass Linux box. Man I remember writing code for the GUS to do players just because I wanted to see if I could... Back when I was good at 80x86 assembly, now all I can see is RISC. LOL

    I've tried some other trackers but you know how it is... you get stuck on something and before you know it you're old and crochety and just don't give a damn about the others anymore! :-)

    Seriously though, if anyone has links to S3M trackers or even something else in which I can convert all my STM/S3Ms over to and use for Linux, I'd be one very happy camper. I've looked into MIDI but my skill at a "real" keyboard just isn't as great. :-)

  • Can anyone deny now that opensource is catching on? First Creative Labs. Then Aureal. Now, Creative labs again, and DVD source!

    As a gesture, it might be nice to thank these and all the other companies (i.e. Trident, nVidia, 3Dfx) and others who provide us with this critical support for Linux (and other Opensource os's). This is so we can get back to what computers and os's are all about. Games! ...:) I mean, if Ken Ritchie wrote an O/S just so he could play a game, what doubt could there be?

  • From the DXR2 ReadMe:

    Readme for DXR2 driver v0.9b

    This is still a DEVELOPMENT driver, because parts of it are still not properly
    tested, and a few parts are missing (see "Todo").

    Also, VGA overlay is not yet supported.... output is to a TV connected to the
    video output of the card.

    The current IOCTL interface is TEMPORARY and WILL change... probably to be
    compatable with the prototype DVD interface on linuxtv.org's web pages.

    The current major device number (120) is TEMPORARY, and only for development pur
    poses.
    it WILL change when the driver is finished.

    It has only been tested with kernel 2.2.8

    To use:

    1) compile each of the following modules

    anp82, bt865, dxr2, pcm1723, tc6807af, vxp524, zivaDS

    2) insert the modules into your kernel:

    insmod anp82
    insmod bt865
    insmod pcm1723
    insmod tc6807af
    insmod vxp524
    insmod zivaDS
    insmod dxr2

    (it doesn't matter which order the first 6 are in, but the dxr2 module
    MUST be loaded last)

    3) Make the device file "mknod c /dev/dxr2 120 0"

    4) Extract the DVD microcode from Creative's windows driver. You can get this
    by installing the windows version (say into
    "c:\Program Files\Creative\DXR2"), and copying the file "dvd1.ux" from the
    install directory. Currently, put this file in the driver's "test" directory.


    5) Get a sample .VOB file (it is set up to play the sample
    "CREATIVE.VOB" from the driver CD), and put it in the driver's "test"
    directory.

    6) Compile and run the test program in the test directory.

    If all goes well, you should see the test video on the TV screen.. this will
    probably have a number of glitches, which are being investigated.
  • Ok, sorry this is offtopic, but it excites as much as the Aureal stuff. :)

    From the LiViD mailing list:

    Hi, I'm one of the developers of the DXR2 driver.
    The version on Creative's site is an older version which doesn't work properly. They haven't yet given us upload access to their CVS server, so we cannot update it.

    You can get the current version from http://www.geocities.com/dxr2linux
    This is temporary though, until we get CVS upload access.


    --
    adq

  • Yes, these are indeed drivers for the dxr2 cards. Very cool. BUT: For now, it'll only output to a TV connected to the card. It can't do VGA overlay. This is apparently a coordinated effort (or will be) with linuxtv.org, so I would expect to see some announcements from them soon. Also, you're gonna need the Windows drivers so you can snatch the DVD microcode from them -- hooray for copyrights -- so don't throw out that CD-Rom full of windows drivers just yet. Other than that, this looks like an enormous step forward for DVD on Linux, which has been too long in coming.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • So you want either GPL, or non-GPL but bug-free. There are many people who want GPL or nothing at all, but you indicate that merely being bug-free is good enough. What about just plain Free? It doesn't have to be GPL in order for you to have the freedom to modify, repair and redistibute the driver.

    I can only assume that you want any bug-fixes to be copylefted as well. While this may sound good on the surface, realize that most bug-fixes are one line or less of code. Most developers would be glad to give the licensor carte blanche to a single line fix, rather than demanding specific licensing terms for it.
  • 4Fronts drivers are excellent, and I think they serve a good purpose - I was just whining about being out $30 - sort of like when chip prices go down by 25-50% the day after you buy one :)
  • I realize the audio is uncompressed when you play, but MP3 is lossy and it just sounds "odd" when copied to MiniDisc. 192 and 256 Kbps MP3 encodings sound fine to my ear, but 128 and even 160 Kbps go "funky". Ah well, I suppose it's mostly a matter of how trained your ear is to pick anomolies up anyways.
  • True, but did you see "[your OS] supported" on the box when you bought it? If you buy a Ford part but own a Volkswagon, do you get mad?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Well, if you look at 3D audio, Creative LTD is working together with Loki software to attempt to set a linux 3D/positional audio standard for the hardware manufacturers.
    Meanwhile, Aureal says it is up to Creative to get things like EAX to work under Linux.
    So, I guess they are working towards 1 standard..
    If Creative wouldn't have crasped the OSS concept, they would have never switched to GPL.
    This change didn't came over one night ice,
    I dunno about other compagnies, but I think the restance against opening up propriety stuff, can only be broken after they've already realized the OSS concept and it's advantages...
    And if they realize Linux is going to be mainstream business? Well I guess they do read PC magazines or at least news papers..
  • Are all these new drivers going to be designed to work with the sound system currently built into the kernel, ALSA, both, or neither?

    (ie: Who's standard are they going to adopt, or are they going to use their own?)

    Don't get me wrong - drivers from manufacturers are wonderful news for Linux, but how much do they really understand about Linux, the OSS concept, and everything else involved?

  • Now I can get back my sound card out of my wife's machine. Good-bye SB16, hello again to my Turtle Beach Montego.

    Of course, I have to convince my wife to give up _another_ sound card. It was hard enough to get the SB16 away from her!
  • All I can say is THANK GOD. I've been sitting with my SB16 in my box since I switched to only Linux..and I REALLY miss my MX300... and stuff
    ---------

  • Re:One burning question... (Score:4)

    by Gleef ( 86 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @03:07AM (#1570198) Homepage
    Well, Creative's Linux development page [soundblaster.com] references both kernel issues and Alsa issues, so I suspect they will directly support both. If they don't, the source will be GPL, so it's not a big deal.

    Aureal, I don't know about. Currently they just refer Linux users to OpenSound.



    ----
  • Correct me if I am wrong, but since they are going to release the source code someone can easily come along and build support for them directly in the kernel, right?

    It doesn't really matter what the new drivers are going to be designed to work with.

  • This sounds great. But please tell me that these drivers, created by some of the very same companies that give us drivers for WinTel machines, are truly GPL'ed.

    Or convince us they are bug free. Either will do.

    Joe
  • Maybe I am wrong - but will this be really of major advandage, if they put the source under a restrictive license, as opposed to GPL? Second question - yes, I know, I'm a lamer - how are those drivers incorporated in current kernels? How does it work? I never used any other driver than what I compiled into my latest kernel, and what came with the Source...

    Regards!

    January

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Expletive Deleted. After waiting 6 months for driver support, I went out and ordered a Hoontech 4DWave card.

    NOW they announce drivers for Linux!!!

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @03:13AM (#1570205)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • You know, it is a good day, now that all these companies like Creative Labs are releasing open-source drivers for their hardware. It is a wonderful day to see that RMS's dream of free software is already changing the industry for the better. Here I cite ATI, Creative Labs, and now this. This is all just so wonderful. :-)
  • Oh baby...I can't wait for drivers for my Xitel Platinum Storm! Can we say Digital Out mp3s to my MiniDisk recorder? ;)
  • This new Aureal driver may just be the thing that pushes me over to switch entirely to Linux (except for 3d games)--I listen to lots and lots of music and I've been waiting for my Monster MX300 to be supported for almost a year. I need the music to work sometimes, and it appears that from now on I'll be able to function "normally" in Linux just as I had in Windows. It seems that Aureal is just following up on Creative's initiative, though--rather disappointing, considering Aureal's technology is, in my opinion, better.
    ------
    Michael Huang
    darva@geocities.com
    "A spirit with a vision
    Is a dream with a mission." -Rush
  • Anyone have any word on developmental work on the Sigma Hollywood cards? Or are they just thumbing their noses and not releasing specs? Personally on Windows, I prefer a Sigma card, and a Toshiba DVD drive to the Creative bundle.
  • Check out opensource.creative.com Read the CVS section: Anonymous CVS To access the anonymous CVS service on this site, set your CVSROOT environment variable thusly: CVSROOT=:pserver:cvsguest@opensource.creative.com: /usr/local/cvsroot Next, use the `cvs login' command to connect to the server. The password is "cvsguest". Then you can use "cvs -z3 checkout emu10k1" or "cvs -z3 checkout dxr2". Interesting huh? Haven't actually checked it....but I hope its true...cause if it is...I think I wanna go out and get a Creative Labs DVD!
  • Hopefully they will *not* be GPL'd so other operating systems can benefit by Aureal's decision. Even the LGPL would be preferable so 4Front could integrate this into their early Vortex support..
  • Ugh. I've been doing this already for a little while, and it's not really worth it. Use uncompressed audio to write to MiniDisc; MP3 just is already compressed, and something "funky" happens to the audio when the ATRAC encoding gets ahold of it.
  • Why is it so abhorrent for some people to pay money for good quality drivers, just because they don't give away their source? I didn't feel bad paying my $30 for 4Front drivers.

  • OK I'll bite (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Open Source is not catching on I'll change my opinion when one of these two companies follows the example: Epson or Hewlett Packard Printers.

    Printer and Scanner support is currently a mess (joke is more accurate, but if i say joke ppl willl think I'm trolling)

    I happen to think that decent printer support would be better than total support for every soundcard trick out there. I'm plenty happy with basic sound isa soundblaster 64 value card, but putting together Linux systems for friends and family is pretty hard when the only new model Epson printer with support is the 1520 (which I have and enjoy but other people don't want to spend $400 for basic printing --and the 1520 is such a large beastie too) None of the Epson "photo" series are supported at all. This is IMO is an obviously higher priority but apparently it's not as exciting as sound card bells and whistles. Truly wish people who get all red in the face about demanding 100% support from NVIDIA and Creative Labs could find time in their day to send polite emails to HP printer div and Epson and Umax. Linux is falling down in this crucial area badly, and its bid to be a desktop enduser OS (at all) is on indefinte hold as a result.

  • Just one question.....where did you find that?? I looked five seconds ago and I couldnät find any link on Creatives linux page or developer page to this site...
  • Well, some Aureal cards at least. They were released quite a while ago, so I suspect that there are some newer cards which aren't supported under OS/2.
  • Linux has printer drivers, and a lot of them. Since you are talking about real people, I will use cheapo color printers as an example, which it seems everybody is getting. Lots of them support linux. At least the older ones. Though I guess in a few months, the situation might have changed, and all of the new ones could use gdi (which means they probably never work under linux). Worst case scenario you could just get an older printer. Its not like printers for home use have got that much better over the years.
    Some people who use linux need this special hardware, as they had no alternative already on linux. Some might by certain cards, like a Matrix for video, or a SB Live for sound just becuase these companies released source. It is expected. The same thing with printers. You might have to buy some hardware just for linux.
  • Now I can get that Vortex 2 I've always wanted.

    I posted a comment to the effect that I was going to buy a SB Live unless Aureal made their drivers open source in the thread about Creative open sourcing their drivers. Maybe somebody at Aureal read it ;-)

    Now the big question is what will this mean for 3D sound in Linux? Creative says they are going to be developing 3D sound for their Linux drivers, but as far as I know all Aureal has said is that they will be open-sourcing their regular drivers. I don't believe that they've even said they will release their specs. So will we just get some regular sound drivers that happen to be open-source, or is Aureal really committing to the Linux platform? At this point I just don't think we have enough information to get too exciting about this announcement. I probably will buy that Vortex 2 though ;-)
  • It might warm your heart to know that IT started out as a clone of ST3, and hence has the same wonderful interface. But given the choice between S3M and XM (format-wise, anyway) I'd take XM, given identical interfaces. S3M is just so *limited*. Of course, I'd happily choose IT over XM. :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Oh, I'm well aware of the sam9407 stuff. I'm on the dev list, but haven't gotten around to unsubscribing myself. It just isn't worth the effort, loss of functionality in Windows, and CPU drain. (I thought I'd mentioned all of that in my previous post in one way or another :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Where did you read this? It seems to me you're spreading lies unless you can produce actual proof.
  • I allready got rid of the MX300 I purchases quite awhile ago due to lousy drivers even for win98, let alone lack of support for any other os.
    I have a yahmaha XG pci thing in the machine I use for win98 games and while it works okay I have volume problems and the digital out seems not to
    work either. not to mention their drivers seem to be stuck back in DirectX5 days.

    A generic soundblaster 64 still seems to be the most compatible thing around that works out of the box.
  • You know what? In my opinion, Ink Jets are really, really pointless. Without exception, they are unbelievably expensive to own and operate and produce so-so output (except for certain HPs, which are beautiful). But even those HPs are pointless. Why? I've never, ever needed to print anything in color. It was always just a neat trick. People trying to get real work done really don't need it. Therefore, buy a laser printer. If you look into Linux support for laser printers, I think you'll see it's in much, much better shape. Now, I will make a claim the mathematically disinclined will find uncredible: laser printers are vastly cheaper than ink jets. Why? Well, that ink jet ink costs $60 (color+black), and lasts, at absolute most, 500 pages. My laser printer toner cartridge costs $65 and lasts for 2500 pages! A little math shows that the $100 difference in the initial price tag vanishes very quickly, if you do a lot of printing (for instance, you are a business). So, buy a laser printer! HP printers are particularly well supported, well priced, and of excellent quality (in my experience). Note, I may sound like I work for HP, but I don't. I work(ed) for Staples, selling printers. These are the conclusions I came to. And no, I did NOT make comission.
  • Think BeOS, OS/2, *BSD.
    BeOS has already benefitted (is that a word?) from Open Source. Large part of BeOS drivers are open soruce, either from Be or third party.
    Just my 2c.

    Jón
  • This will go together perfectly with the new and improved support for 3D graphics I expect to appear in Linux real soon now... Yes, I'm thinking of XFree86 4 and the direct rendering support. Since Aureal's "claim to fame" (in my world) is that they developed the A3D API, with effects such as "wavetracing" supported in hardware, perhaps the future for good 3D graphics + sound in Linux just grew a little bit brighter? I sure hope so. Hacking 3D sound seems like it could be fun.
  • now, i'll finally get rid of my last ISA card!
    now all i need is for XFREE 4 to come out and i'll have a happy machine.

    now if i can only get my tv card to work, then i can finally put together that MP3/TV system.

    3d screensavers and sound is all you need in life, right?
  • I followed those instructions... and got source code! Apparently, it is true... this is the best news (Linux-related) I've had all year! Finally! No more rebooting to Windows for ANY REASON! For me, anyway, since I don't play games other than Civ...

  • Open Source Drivers as a Hardware Checkmark? (Score:4)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Tuesday November 02, 1999 @03:34AM (#1570237) Homepage
    Aureal has always been one of my favortie companies, and their recent announcement is quite intriguing.

    Much of the industry is obsessed with "meeting the marks"--x amount of video RAM, AGP/PCI/VLB(way back in the day), Direct3D, OpenGL, etc.

    Essentially, the complexities of various products are simplified down to a set of necessary functions supported and some "speed scale" created by a semiobjective source.

    Creative Labs' announcement signified not only a new level of support for Open Source driver development models, but also a relatively drastic turnaround in company policy. It wasn't that long ago that Creative was flatly refusing to open their drivers to anyone but OSS Sound Inc. under NDA. Now they're saying they'll support any and all comers, and even overcome the starting barriers(CVS/Bugzilla) so that development can begin ASAP.

    Such full fledged support is reserved only for items considered integral for the success of a product--in other words, a line item, a necessary feature.

    A checkmark.

    That Aureal(whose stock symbol always seems to confuse the hell out of every engine I check it with) is following suit means that, for the first time, not only Linux support but full, open access to driver development infrastructure is becoming a line item checkmark for a segment of the PC Hardware Expansion industry.

    Such developments bode well for future developers, who will hopefully not need to painfully reverse engineer nearly as much in their attempts to get network cards, 3D Graphics boards, or any other custom hardware to function now and long after a company decides to cease support for a given product.

    When ZD Net reports closed drivers as a downside to a given piece of hardware, we'll have truly won.

    However, it should be noted that while the SB Live is a full DSP architecture that developers should be able to exploit to unimaginable degrees(though I'm not expecting a Perl RegEx module using the SB Live *LOL*), much more content is hardcoded within the Aureal chipset. Indeed, this is a risk of a open development process--companies may feel that, to protect their intellectual property, they need to lock it up within the chipset instead of releasing it in the drivers.

    Of course, a chipset and a card that remains viable for significantly longer periods of time is far more appealing to both OEMs and consumers, and this is a benefit that both programmable circuitry and open development foster.

    This isn't to say, though, that I'm not extremely excited about Aureal's announcement. I first heard Aureal's A3D at WinHEC '97 a few years back, and it was the first time I had truly heard 3D Sound that actually worked. Aureal is one of the great stock price tragedies of the last few years, mainly because of some rather nasty innuendo and patent litigation. (Yes Virginia, that ugly USPTO spectre pops up again.) Their technology is sound(no pun intended), and their cards are uniformly high quality. I'm quite interested at seeing what the Linux community will do with access to the extensive 3D Sound modeling that Aureal has implemented--literal 3D environment models are used to determine reflections, reverbs, etc. It's all quite amazing, and very, very well implemented.

    It's definitely an interesting time to be a sound engineer in the computer industry. One thought--BeOS ought to be supporting some new very powerful sound processing cards very soon, if it doesn't support them already.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • It is all good and well that these companys are releasing drivers, but are they releasing documentation too? As has been prooven by the TNT drivers from nVidia, having open source drivers with no documentation really limits the ammount of work that can be done to improve them by developers. So does anyone know, are spec's being released?
  • Don't complain - the Hoontech 4DWave is a good card, and is the preferred card for ALSA [alsa-project.org].

    Hoontech's card uses two digital chips: The Trident Microsystems [tridentmicro.com]
    4DWave-NX and the Sigmatel STAC9708 [sigmatel.com].
    Programming information is available for these chips, in the datasheet for the STAC9708 and here [alsa-project.org] for the 4DWave.

    p.s. If you don't like Hoontech, other manufacturers also have 4DWave-NX cards.
  • ... for bringing me drivers for my Monster-II before these slackers.
  • Welcome to the world of PCI, my friend.

    My old sound card was ISA (The cheap version of the SB16) and when I started using Linux, there was no support for it, except from OSS and they were charging $20. I know it's not much, but I never shelled out the cash and then finally the Linux kernel added support for it. My new card, an ES1371, is detected without a catch.

    With all that's been going on in the Kernel with sound drivers, let's not overlook the app-level sound system. As it stands, I don't believe the kernel allows multiple programs to output sound. Programs like ESD are great for doing just that, and I think the new version of KDE's audio daemon has ESD support. Linux is starting to sound pretty good.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Yeah, it's worth a try. I think Yamaha employes are ex-KGB agents. They think you're insane to use Linux/*BSD.

    I suggest that if you want to talk to Yamaha about their YMF724F/YMF744/YMF754 3D audio chips, you should write to:
    ystaudio@yamaha.com

    Let them know how much cooler SB and Aureal are. How they're behind in the game. They should jump or be trampled.

    Pan
  • arrrgh! I fumbled the submit/preview buttons... I was going to add that I would rather support a developer-friendly product like the 4DWave, than a grudging-support-after-months-of-pleading company like Creative or Aureal. Plus, it's actually a pretty nice card, with features like hardware mixing of up to 64 different PCM streams, 4-speaker support, and optional S/PDIF digital output.
  • I missed the mark on this one. I was upgrading my sister's computer from an old Pentium 133 to a (somewhat) more modern K6-200, and while I was at it, I decided to give her my SoundBlaster AWE 64 since I never had to been able to get it to run under Linux anyway. Even after paying for OSS drivers. :=)

    So, I went out and bought an Ensoniq for 30 bucks. Upside: I now have sound under Linux. Downside: Sound under Half-Life and Unreal under Windows is now tinny, where before the sound was rich and full with the AWE 64 card.

    And, naturally, I ship the better sound card away in my sister's machine TWO FREAKIN DAYS before the announcement of open source drivers! Ah, Life never gets bored of her dirty tricks, does she?
  • Linuxgames also ran a brief posting: mitch pointed out that Creative not only released the source code to their SB Live! drivers, but also the source to their dxr2 DVD decoder drivers. The source can be found in the same place as the SB Live! source, at opensource.creative.com. Better and better.
  • I couldn't agree with you more. The best soundcard I've ever had is the PAS16 by Media Vision; this is relevant because Media Vision's engineering department parted company to form Aureal. The PAS16 is a rather mediocre card now, but considering it was the first consumer 16-bit soundcard out there and, until very recently, still had better sound quality than anything put out by Creative Labs says a lot. I've been waiting and hoping for Aureal to realize that there is little to no good in not opensourcing their drivers, especially for their A3D 2.0 chipset seeing as how most of the processing happens in the chip anyway (I can understand, though not necessarily agree with, them not wanting to opensource drivers for the A3D 1.0 chipset since most of the actual work is done in software).

    As far as BeOS goes, there's some very nice positional 3D audio that it does in software (somewhat akin to DirectSound3D which, for all its problems, does put out some convincing positional audio) and I believe they have the infrastructure for hardware support. They just need drivers.

    In any case, I'll be glad to finally have a modern soundcard with good sound quality which is supported by Linux. That and a port of Impulse Tracker would make me a very happy porcupine. (Yes, I know there's other Linux trackers, but they only implement part of XM at best. I need at least the ability to import ITs in a way that accounts for NNAs and I would much prefer having resonant filtering and MIDI available.)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • As many have already stated, this will not only benefit Linux, but also many other open source operating systems. I, however, am looking forward to seeing this help one particular closed source OS, Windows 2000. I have a nice SMP machine, dual booting Windows 2000 build 2151 and Caldera OpenLinux 2.3. I currently have no sound in Linux, which it looks like is going to change very soon. My problem is that under SMP machines, the Vortex2 will lock up my system hard when using it for just about anything other than mp3. This has been a problem known to Aureal for quite some time now. Time to go get the Windows 2000 RC2 DDK and wait for this source to become available, so I can attempt to get some good SMP support. SMP q3 under Win2k, here I come!
  • The widely-used Yamaha YMF24-based cards are still not supported, because Yamaha won't release the programming information. Perhaps they might be more amenable to persuasion now that more of their competitors are opening up?
  • I refuse to deal with Hoontech. I got burned by getting a SoundTrack 128 Ruby. Great specs, lousy card. Their Windows drivers didn't work at all (I got it mostly for Impulse Tracker), and it wasn't helped by the fact that it had no DMA - all sound was piped to it via PIO, so when playing MP3s under Linux (which, admittedly, sounded *wonderful*), it'd take 6% of the CPU to decode and 25% of the CPU to actually play the sound buffer. This was the best I got after trying to hold a conversation with their tech support department. Didn't help that shortly after I bought the card, they decided to start churning out what seemed like a new card every month, rather than supporting their old cards. Basically I spent $200 on a card with great specs but absolutely no support for the things I got it for.

    Oh, and their tech support, such as it was, consisted of one person who barely understood English, who, no matter how much I explained the problem, could only offer the advice of reinstalling the drivers.

    The fact they're still around indicates that they must have gotten better in some regards, but I'm still unwilling to trust any of their hardware. With all the time I spent trying to get the ST128 Ruby working (and failing), I could have spent that time working for $7/hour at my university admin job and afforded a professional studio soundcard - and a real one, not one that claimed to be one.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Only if it's GPLed. (For example, the Intel and Trapeze gigabit ethernet drivers are both source distributions, but as neither are GPL, or compatiable, neither can be directly written into the kernel. They'd need reverse-engineering, in such a way that there was no licence issue involved, first, before Linus could even consider them for inclusion.)
  • The SB Live driver will be GPLed, according to this page [creative.com]. The ATI glx driver is not being developed by ATI (they released specs instead of a driver) and will have an X-style license. As for Aureal, we'll have to wait for the official announcement.
  • This isn't the beginning of a domino effect - it's an indication of a very welcome one that's been gaining momentum for quite some time. What nVidia did for video cards (actually *writing* an XFree86 server for it) on the tails of Matrox (releasing low-level specs to the G200, admittedly nothing new for video cards but very new for 3D cards) is what Aureal and Creative are now doing for soundcards. Also, several Ethernet cards have had vendor-supported drivers for some time now (such as tulip-based cards), and Intel just released some opensource drivers, though Intel's license very subtly violates the GPL [linuxcare.com], but I'm sure that'll be worked out eventually.

    This is still a very Good Thing(tm), though, since it takes more dominoes to fall to keep a domino effect going.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

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