[alsa-devel] Infrasonic Quartet

[Pavel Hofman]

Vedran Miletić napsal(a):
> 2008/11/12 Pavel Hofman <pavel.hofman at insite.cz>:
>> Vedran Miletić wrote:
>>> Auzen started to distribute one cool new Envy24HT-S card, and it looks
>>> really interesting to me. Specs are awesome, and it also has word
>>> clock on card!
>>> http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/infra_quartet.php
>>> http://www.infra-sonic.com/site/p_PCI_quartet.php
>>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156007
>>>
>>> According to envy24.svobodno.com, it has:
>>> Infrasonic Quartet      0x3030  0x4953
>>> Envy24HT-S - supported by ALSA
>>> AK4620B (ADC / DAC) - not sure, probably not supported?
>>> AK4112 - not sure either?
>>>
>>> However it has Xilinx on card in similar way as ESI Juli@ does, so
>>> it's probably not a standard Envy24HT-S card.
>>> Any ideas if this card could be supported?
>>>
>> According to the block diagram in the User's Manual the Xilinx plays a major
>> role. The FPGA provides even more functions than in Juli.
>>
>> Without some information from the manufacturer (even if under NDA) the
>> driver will be rather difficult to write. The FPGA is controlled by Envy's
>> GPIOs and their signals would have to be electrically analyzed under Windows
>> driver - a pretty complicated task. It is very different from a regular card
>> with well-documented codecs only where you just need to trace codec pins to
>> corresponding GPIOs.
>>
>> Pavel.
>>
> 
> First off, thanks for answering. I didn't expect anyone to answer,
> since this card isn't this common yet, so it surprised me that it
> caught someone's interest. Good :)
> 
> Well, IMHO, this card is as far as Envy24HT-S can go. Sure you can
> have more inputs/outputs, but at 4x4 and without breakout box that's
> it, in terms of features. So, I didn't expect the design to be simple
> at all. Not to mention unsupported DAC/ADC and DIT.
> 
> Yet, assuming we get the specifications from Infrasonic/Auzen, would
> you or anyone else be interested in coding a driver?

Well, I could work on the driver, it would be similar to Juli. ice1724.c 
is mostly ready for the proprietary clock model. The aforementioned 
chips have complete documentation publicly available. If I had the card 
physically to trace connection and test (I am no Takashi the wizard :) ) 
and some documentation available, it should be viable.

Honestly I am not going to purchase it myself, I have no other use for 
it plus PCI is almost history now. Unfortunately I have not met any 
PCI-express card with quality 44.1kHz playback (i.e. dedicated crystal 
clock).

Pavel.