[Sound-open-firmware] Introduction and questions

[chris hermansen]

Liam and list,

Thanks for the kind reply, this is exciting!

On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 1:34 PM Liam Girdwood <
liam.r.girdwood at linux.intel.com> wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
> On Tue, 2018-09-11 at 14:12 -0700, chris hermansen wrote:
> > I write a column on open source and music on https://opensource.com/
> > Recently I was at Open Summit and learned of this project.  I
> subsequently
> > contacted some folks at Intel to learn more about how this project might
> > affect users of open source media players.  One of my contacts advised
> > posting questions to this list.  To avoid spamming the list any more
> than I
> > already have, I'd like to confirm that a few such questions won't be a
> > supreme annoyance to the list members.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any advice.
>
> No annoyance will occur :) Feel free to ask. The reason I ask for the list
> is
> that the questions and answers will be all searchable.
>
>
Starting with a bit of background... there is a class of audio hardware and
software user out there who uses a configuration like this:

   1. laptop, desktop, server appliance...
   2. running Linux
   3. with a dedicated DAC used for music playback
   4. connected to a high quality headphone amplifier or home stereo
   5. with an open source music player client/server installed that
   probably accesses ALSA directly
   6. with a bunch of music files, probably FLAC, maybe DSF, probably CD
   quality or higher
   7. time on their hands to enjoy this

If the computer hardware itself is used for many and various things, then
likely the above configuration will want to run most audio traffic through
Pulse and out the built-in audio speakers / headphone, with only the
high-quality music being sent to the dedicated DAC directly over ALSA to
avoid software mixing, resampling etc.  However if the computer hardware is
more or less dedicated to music enjoyment, then it seems reasonable to hope
that the built-in audio hardware could itself be dedicated to the primary
music reproduction role, in a high-quality, low noise, low distortion,
"bit-perfect" fashion.

So, looking at the sound-open-firmware initiative:

   1. is this primarily oriented toward opening up the built-in audio
   processing chain? or should we expect add-on ADC and DAC hardware?
   2. is it reasonable to expect really high-performance DAC
   implementations (low noise etc) coming out of this?
   3. what kind of other applications might we expect to see?
      1. could we expect to see the ability to build a digital crossover
      with a FIR filter to drive high, medium and low frequency power
amplifiers
      and speakers?
      2. what about other types of digital filtering to compensate for room
      acoustic issues?
      3. might we see some type of audio compensation to "pull the music
      out of the head" for headphone users?
      4. what about decoding DSF directly, not just PCM?
      5. will people build proprietary things on top of it (for example,
      could MQA use it to build an MQA decoder)?

That's all I can think of right now; thanks in advance!
-- 
Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail "dot" com

C'est ma façon de parler.