| ============================================================== |
| Alsa driver for Digigram miXart8 and miXart8AES/EBU soundcards |
| ============================================================== |
| |
| Digigram <alsa@digigram.com> |
| |
| |
| GENERAL |
| ======= |
| |
| The miXart8 is a multichannel audio processing and mixing soundcard |
| that has 4 stereo audio inputs and 4 stereo audio outputs. |
| The miXart8AES/EBU is the same with a add-on card that offers further |
| 4 digital stereo audio inputs and outputs. |
| Furthermore the add-on card offers external clock synchronisation |
| (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code and Video Synchro) |
| |
| The mainboard has a PowerPC that offers onboard mpeg encoding and |
| decoding, samplerate conversions and various effects. |
| |
| The driver don't work properly at all until the certain firmwares |
| are loaded, i.e. no PCM nor mixer devices will appear. |
| Use the mixartloader that can be found in the alsa-tools package. |
| |
| |
| VERSION 0.1.0 |
| ============= |
| |
| One miXart8 board will be represented as 4 alsa cards, each with 1 |
| stereo analog capture 'pcm0c' and 1 stereo analog playback 'pcm0p' device. |
| With a miXart8AES/EBU there is in addition 1 stereo digital input |
| 'pcm1c' and 1 stereo digital output 'pcm1p' per card. |
| |
| Formats |
| ------- |
| U8, S16_LE, S16_BE, S24_3LE, S24_3BE, FLOAT_LE, FLOAT_BE |
| Sample rates : 8000 - 48000 Hz continuously |
| |
| Playback |
| -------- |
| For instance the playback devices are configured to have max. 4 |
| substreams performing hardware mixing. This could be changed to a |
| maximum of 24 substreams if wished. |
| Mono files will be played on the left and right channel. Each channel |
| can be muted for each stream to use 8 analog/digital outputs separately. |
| |
| Capture |
| ------- |
| There is one substream per capture device. For instance only stereo |
| formats are supported. |
| |
| Mixer |
| ----- |
| <Master> and <Master Capture> |
| analog volume control of playback and capture PCM. |
| <PCM 0-3> and <PCM Capture> |
| digital volume control of each analog substream. |
| <AES 0-3> and <AES Capture> |
| digital volume control of each AES/EBU substream. |
| <Monitoring> |
| Loopback from 'pcm0c' to 'pcm0p' with digital volume |
| and mute control. |
| |
| Rem : for best audio quality try to keep a 0 attenuation on the PCM |
| and AES volume controls which is set by 219 in the range from 0 to 255 |
| (about 86% with alsamixer) |
| |
| |
| NOT YET IMPLEMENTED |
| =================== |
| |
| - external clock support (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code, Video Sync) |
| - MPEG audio formats |
| - mono record |
| - on-board effects and samplerate conversions |
| - linked streams |
| |
| |
| FIRMWARE |
| ======== |
| |
| [As of 2.6.11, the firmware can be loaded automatically with hotplug |
| when CONFIG_FW_LOADER is set. The mixartloader is necessary only |
| for older versions or when you build the driver into kernel.] |
| |
| For loading the firmware automatically after the module is loaded, use a |
| install command. For example, add the following entry to |
| /etc/modprobe.d/mixart.conf for miXart driver: |
| :: |
| |
| install snd-mixart /sbin/modprobe --first-time -i snd-mixart && \ |
| /usr/bin/mixartloader |
| |
| |
| (for 2.2/2.4 kernels, add "post-install snd-mixart /usr/bin/vxloader" to |
| /etc/modules.conf, instead.) |
| |
| The firmware binaries are installed on /usr/share/alsa/firmware |
| (or /usr/local/share/alsa/firmware, depending to the prefix option of |
| configure). There will be a miXart.conf file, which define the dsp image |
| files. |
| |
| The firmware files are copyright by Digigram SA |
| |
| |
| COPYRIGHT |
| ========= |
| |
| Copyright (c) 2003 Digigram SA <alsa@digigram.com> |
| Distributable under GPL. |
