Recently I was advised to channel multichannel audio over stereo I2S and unpack in user space with plugins.
I have questions about this approach.
Right now, with a hacked machine driver, I get DMA unpacking to multichannel for free. It works with all sample rates in silicon and it also works with all word sizes.
If I switch to user space ALSA plugin unpacking, as advised, can anyone answer the following questions please :
If I want to handle all word sizes which are currently implemented S16 -> S32, do I need to use different plugins to handle different word sizes ?
Regarding the actual channel unpacking, will it cost a lot more to do this in user space, rather then using the DMA silicon ? The bcm2835 is not a very powerful processor and this is a concern.
Does anyone have an example plugin which will handle all word sizes through one plugin device ?
thanks
Matt