[alsa-devel] Infrasonic Quartet

[Vedran Miletić]

2008/11/13 Vedran Miletić <rivanvx at gmail.com>:
> 2008/11/12 Pavel Hofman <pavel.hofman at insite.cz>:
>> 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.
>>
>
> I do agree that PCI is almost history nowadays. Better said, it should
> be. However, I see no viable replacement for Envy24 cards on PCI-E.
> Oxygen and X-Fi just don't cut it. Anything else?
>
> Of course, when it comes to Envy on PCI-E there is Tokyo Style S010
> DCS-SEV24, however that card doesn't support ASIO and since it uses
> PCI <--> PCI-E bridge it's performance (in low latency operation) will
> probably suck. And also it's not aimed at producers, and it doesn't
> even support ASIO in Windows. I believe there are no MIDI ports
> either.
>
> Therefore, out of all those "new" Envy24-based cards (since that's
> basically what's available in this price range), Quartet stands out as
> basically the best producer-oriented solution out there. Even more
> than that - this is by far the best Envy24 card I have seen so far.
> Almost like there is nothing to add :-) It's not available where I
> live (Croatia), but it might be in the future since Auzen started to
> distribute it, that's why I was interested in possibility of ALSA
> driver for it appearing.
>
> Well, I will contact Infrasonic in the coming days and let you know
> how it went. Fingers crossed.
>
> --
> Vedran Miletić
>

I got a positive reply from Infrasonic, but haven't taken it further
since I lack coding skills in this regard. Anyone wants to?

-- 
Vedran Miletić