Linux and audio interfaces

[kara]

One of the reocurring issues when you talk to somebody about a linux daw 
True, linux doesn't support all audio interfaces, but if you inform yourself a bit you can get a good audio interface that works out of the box.

So, I needed a new audio interface for my laptop P4 daw running on 64 studio.
After a bit reading on the different internet forum it looked like my best choice would be a firewire audio interface.

Here is what I needed :
- Stereo IN from my mixer (for my hardware synths)
- MIC in from the mic pre-amp
- HI-Z in for my bass guitar
- Low CPU usage
- Low latency

And here is what I bought :
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FireWireSolo-main.html

After connecting it to the daw, starting the daw (carefully staring at system messages to see if I saw any errors...), i went into jack control and changed the audio driver to free-bob (linux firewire driver) and choose hw:1.
Jack didn't complain, pfew first releave.

As a first test, I started Hydrogen and let it play one of the demo song, yep it worked out of the box !!!
By twidling a bit with the jack control panel, I got it down to 5,2 msec and 1,9% CPU load.

Another step forward to the perfect linux daw 
I love when things just work...

k

[Wyatt]

Kara,

Congratulations!

That is great news..I think lots of folks are going to want to go this route in the near future.

You and Oren and Folderol and Moon ought to put together a sticky on this subject.

System recommendations..software configuration.

Anyway..glad to hear yours is up and running and added to the list of sucesses.

Wyatt

[Oren]

Good news
M-audio has been committed to organizing its software requirements to accommodate Linux operating systems. It is good to know that they are following through with the portable products as well.

[kara]

Yes it is good news
But, to be clear, it's not only thanks to M-audio

The situation is as follows
For USB devices, any of them not only audio interface.
If the device is full USB 2.0 compliant (http://www.tek.com/Measurement/App_Notes/whitepaper/usb/eng/) it will work with Linux. The latest distros have a compliant general usb 2.0 driver compiled. This is pretty the same as under windows plug&play without installing drivers.
So, in 2 words if it is USB 2.0 compliant , it will work, examples I have : My external DVD burner, external zip drive, my hardware recorder BOSS BR600, my midi interface M-AUDIO UNO.

For firewire devices it is a bit different, because there is simply not a real firewire standard. Firewire support is mainly done by free-bob under Linux (http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page). The aim of the Bebob project is to create a universal firewire driver. Once that hardware manufactors have agreed on a hardware firewire standard the freebob driver will support all firewire adaptors, but at the moment they still depend on information given by the manufactor.

But it is true that M-audio has commited to give the information.

The good news is that a lot of manufactors start to understand that there is more in the world than win & mac. And there is a sudden shift of attention toward Linux, mostly due to the vista disaster, expecialy in the audio domain.

k
 

Good news
M-audio has been committed to organizing its software requirements to accommodate Linux operating systems. It is good to know that they are following through with the portable products as well.