| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame^] | 1 | Alsa driver for Digigram miXart8 and miXart8AES/EBU soundcards |
| 2 | Digigram <alsa@digigram.com> |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | GENERAL |
| 6 | ======= |
| 7 | |
| 8 | The miXart8 is a multichannel audio processing and mixing soundcard |
| 9 | that has 4 stereo audio inputs and 4 stereo audio outputs. |
| 10 | The miXart8AES/EBU is the same with a add-on card that offers further |
| 11 | 4 digital stereo audio inputs and outputs. |
| 12 | Furthermore the add-on card offers external clock synchronisation |
| 13 | (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code and Video Synchro) |
| 14 | |
| 15 | The mainboard has a PowerPC that offers onboard mpeg encoding and |
| 16 | decoding, samplerate conversions and various effects. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | The driver don't work properly at all until the certain firmwares |
| 19 | are loaded, i.e. no PCM nor mixer devices will appear. |
| 20 | Use the mixartloader that can be found in the alsa-tools package. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | |
| 23 | VERSION 0.1.0 |
| 24 | ============= |
| 25 | |
| 26 | One miXart8 board will be represented as 4 alsa cards, each with 1 |
| 27 | stereo analog capture 'pcm0c' and 1 stereo analog playback 'pcm0p' device. |
| 28 | With a miXart8AES/EBU there is in addition 1 stereo digital input |
| 29 | 'pcm1c' and 1 stereo digital output 'pcm1p' per card. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Formats |
| 32 | ------- |
| 33 | U8, S16_LE, S16_BE, S24_3LE, S24_3BE, FLOAT_LE, FLOAT_BE |
| 34 | Sample rates : 8000 - 48000 Hz continously |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Playback |
| 37 | -------- |
| 38 | For instance the playback devices are configured to have max. 4 |
| 39 | substreams performing hardware mixing. This could be changed to a |
| 40 | maximum of 24 substreams if wished. |
| 41 | Mono files will be played on the left and right channel. Each channel |
| 42 | can be muted for each stream to use 8 analog/digital outputs seperately. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Capture |
| 45 | ------- |
| 46 | There is one substream per capture device. For instance only stereo |
| 47 | formats are supported. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | Mixer |
| 50 | ----- |
| 51 | <Master> and <Master Capture> : analog volume control of playback and capture PCM. |
| 52 | <PCM 0-3> and <PCM Capture> : digital volume control of each analog substream. |
| 53 | <AES 0-3> and <AES Capture> : digital volume control of each AES/EBU substream. |
| 54 | <Monitoring> : Loopback from 'pcm0c' to 'pcm0p' with digital volume |
| 55 | and mute control. |
| 56 | |
| 57 | Rem : for best audio quality try to keep a 0 attenuation on the PCM |
| 58 | and AES volume controls which is set by 219 in the range from 0 to 255 |
| 59 | (about 86% with alsamixer) |
| 60 | |
| 61 | |
| 62 | NOT YET IMPLEMENTED |
| 63 | =================== |
| 64 | |
| 65 | - external clock support (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code, Video Sync) |
| 66 | - MPEG audio formats |
| 67 | - mono record |
| 68 | - on-board effects and samplerate conversions |
| 69 | - linked streams |
| 70 | |
| 71 | |
| 72 | FIRMWARE |
| 73 | ======== |
| 74 | |
| 75 | [As of 2.6.11, the firmware can be loaded automatically with hotplug |
| 76 | when CONFIG_FW_LOADER is set. The mixartloader is necessary only |
| 77 | for older versions or when you build the driver into kernel.] |
| 78 | |
| 79 | For loading the firmware automatically after the module is loaded, use |
| 80 | the post-install command. For example, add the following entry to |
| 81 | /etc/modprobe.conf for miXart driver: |
| 82 | |
| 83 | install snd-mixart /sbin/modprobe --first-time -i snd-mixart && \ |
| 84 | /usr/bin/mixartloader |
| 85 | (for 2.2/2.4 kernels, add "post-install snd-mixart /usr/bin/vxloader" to |
| 86 | /etc/modules.conf, instead.) |
| 87 | |
| 88 | The firmware binaries are installed on /usr/share/alsa/firmware |
| 89 | (or /usr/local/share/alsa/firmware, depending to the prefix option of |
| 90 | configure). There will be a miXart.conf file, which define the dsp image |
| 91 | files. |
| 92 | |
| 93 | The firmware files are copyright by Digigram SA |
| 94 | |
| 95 | |
| 96 | COPYRIGHT |
| 97 | ========= |
| 98 | |
| 99 | Copyright (c) 2003 Digigram SA <alsa@digigram.com> |
| 100 | Distributalbe under GPL. |