"VIA Announces Strategic Open Source Driver Development Initiative"

[Zbigniew Baniewski]

Maybe someone will find it useful:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/audio/partners/partners_envy24.jsp
--
                                pozdrawiam / regards

                                                Zbigniew Baniewski

[Stuart Henderson]

On 2008-04-10, Zbigniew Baniewski <zb@...> wrote:
> I would to ask about the issue to be found under Linux - is it valid for
> OpenBSD's "audio" too?

No, OpenBSD doesn't resample.

> http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=93315
>
> "The latest versions of ALSA which are included with Ubuntu Edgy, and I
> think Dapper Drake as well, will resample all audio to 48kHz if your
> soundcard does not support hardware mixing. This is also true if the driver
> doesn't support hardware mixing. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely
> no support for hardware mixing with any of the Envy24 chips in Linux. The
> problem with this resampling is that by default ALSA uses a poor resampling
> algorithm to save CPU usage, and destroys the quality of everything played
> back. ALSA uses this software mixing and resampling in order to let more
> than one application play audio at the same time. I have found a solution to
> the audio quality issue however. [..]"

[Alexandre Ratchov-2]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 12:17:05AM +0200, Zbigniew Baniewski wrote:

> I would to ask about the issue to be found under Linux - is it valid for
> OpenBSD's "audio" too?
>
> http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=93315
>
> "The latest versions of ALSA which are included with Ubuntu Edgy, and I
> think Dapper Drake as well, will resample all audio to 48kHz if your
> soundcard does not support hardware mixing. This is also true if the driver
> doesn't support hardware mixing. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely
> no support for hardware mixing with any of the Envy24 chips in Linux. The
> problem with this resampling is that by default ALSA uses a poor resampling
> algorithm to save CPU usage, and destroys the quality of everything played
> back. ALSA uses this software mixing and resampling in order to let more
> than one application play audio at the same time. I have found a solution to
> the audio quality issue however. [..]"

the sample rate shouldn't be a problem; on OpenBSD all usual sample
rates between 8kHz and 96kHz (multiples of 8kHz and 11.25kHz)
should work.

the "unusual" format used by envy (and other "pro" cards) is a
problem for most apps though

-- Alexandre

[Alexandre Ratchov-2]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 11:20:43PM +0200, Zbigniew Baniewski wrote:

> Found it - looks good, but it's an expensive one  :/  what do you think about
> that other chips? Are they supported presently?
>
> http://www.digit-life.com/articles/maudioaudiophile/
>
> * main chip - multichannel PCI controller ENVY24 from IC Ensemble;
> * I2S stereo codec AKM AK4528VF with the 24bit/96kHz DAC and ADC;
> * CS8427 digital transceiver;
>
> Also: http://www25.big.jp/~jam/audiocard/audiophile/

IIRC, someone reported that the Audiophile 2496 works on OpenBSD.
By "works" i mean that it can record and play 24bit samples using
10/12 channels, as it should. Unfortunaltely few audio ports
support such encodings.

Recently jakemsr@ ported jack, afaik it's the only app that can use
natively envy(4) devices. He also modified various audio apps to
use jack, so such cards become more and more usable with usual
apps. See:

http://jakemsr.trancell.org/

-- Alexandre

[Henning Brauer]

* frantisek holop <minusf@...> [2008-04-09 22:19]:
> hmm, on Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 03:35:18PM -0400, bofh said that
> > Sun learnt a lot of lessons when it tried to merge sparc and x86 code bases
> > together around the solaris 2.4 time, iirc.  That's why things like zfs are
> > endian neutral.  OpenBSD started in the multi cpu world to begin with.
>
> i might be wrong, but i thought as of yet, not everything
> is endian neutral in openbsd (carp?)

carp IS endian-neutral

--
Henning Brauer, hb@..., henning@...
BS Web Services, http://bsws.de
Full-Service ISP - Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS Services
Dedicated Servers, Rootservers, Application Hosting - Hamburg & Amsterdam

[j4nKy]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 01:57:17PM +0200, Alexandre Ratchov wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 11:20:43PM +0200, Zbigniew Baniewski wrote:
> > Found it - looks good, but it's an expensive one  :/  what do you think about
> > that other chips? Are they supported presently?
> >
> > http://www.digit-life.com/articles/maudioaudiophile/
> >
> > * main chip - multichannel PCI controller ENVY24 from IC Ensemble;
> > * I2S stereo codec AKM AK4528VF with the 24bit/96kHz DAC and ADC;
> > * CS8427 digital transceiver;
> >
> > Also: http://www25.big.jp/~jam/audiocard/audiophile/
>
> IIRC, someone reported that the Audiophile 2496 works on OpenBSD.
> By "works" i mean that it can record and play 24bit samples using
> 10/12 channels, as it should. Unfortunaltely few audio ports
> support such encodings.
>
> Recently jakemsr@ ported jack, afaik it's the only app that can use
> natively envy(4) devices. He also modified various audio apps to
> use jack, so such cards become more and more usable with usual
> apps. See:
>
> http://jakemsr.trancell.org/

oh, I have already removed some of the things that have been committed.

in -current, xine-lib (and thus kaffeine, amarok and xine-ui), vlc,
portaudio-svn (and thus audacity), audacious-plugins, aqualung,
hydrogen and fluidsynth already have jack support.

hopefully mplayer, arts and akode will have jack support soon (waiting
on replies, hint, hint ;)).

--
jakemsr@...
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

[James Crutchfield]

On 4/9/08, Jeffrey 'jf' Lim <jfs.world@...> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.via.com.tw/en/resources/pressroom/pressrelease.jsp?press_release_no=2088
>
> would this be good news for the community? This is really mainly
> Linux-related, but i'm hoping that their mention of "technical
> documentation" will be good enough for Open to be able to support them...
>
> -jf


I'm running dual mini-ITX Migrus C787-1.5G motherboards in a 1U case - both
have the Via C7 1.5 GHz processor and a gig of RAM each.  Aside from the
issue of versions of OpenBSD up to 4.2 not liking the three-port gigabit
ethernet daughter boards very much, the machines are just downright
painfully slow.  Slow like molasses, and the OS doesn't seem to matter as I
have tried several OpenBSDs, both Enterprise and Desktop editions of Ubuntu
4.07 and 4.10, and even Windows XP Home, Pro, and Server 2003.  Nothing
speeds them up and even drawing a window using any manager is sometimes more
than the things can handle.

I can't help but think that the C7s aren't as i386-compatible as Via would
have us believe, even though they were billed as great for home media center
PCs that could handle encrypted and copy-protected media better than
anything else with the build-in decryption hardware.  I wasn't interested in
this particular application - I needed something very small and minus
towering heat sinks to fit in the 1U case.  The ml was full of Soekris
router throughput issues at the time, so I didn't consider them to be the
best option.

I bought them to be part of a 6U portable rack that served out VSAT
non-military internet access to my unit when deployed, and while they did
the job they about killed me with frustration in the process.  I could be
persuaded to part with one of the motherboards if someone in the project is
interested in doing development work for this arch.

JC

[James Crutchfield]

On 5/6/08, Geoff Steckel <gwes@...> wrote:

>
> I use them for firewalls and disk servers. For that they work
> quite well. Yes, graphics are painfully slow, but I think that's the
> fault of the integrated graphics. Using a PCI graphics card seems
> to speed them up quite a bit.
>
> One of them I use as a disk server peaks out at about 80 MB/sec,
> quite respectable for a 32/33 PCI bus machine. As a firewall, doing
> IPSEC, 20 Mbit/sec uses about 15% of the CPU. Not too bad for a
> fanless machine drawing less than 30 watts total including disks.
>
>   geoff steckel

I'm so dependent upon GUIs while transitioning over from many years of a
career in microsoft support...  I am perfectly comfortable installing and
configuring OSs and applications from the command line, but when it comes
time to see what *state* the machine is in, my little brain needs
pretty colors and pointy-clicky.  Even though booting up OpenBSD 4.1 and 4.2
takes longer than it should (both from SATA and a 2GB CompactFlash), I'll
give 4.3 a spin and keep it strictly command-line.

Unfortunately, adding a PCI card isn't an option, since both motherboards
are in the same 1U case and portability is paramount (it has to ride in a
C-130 back and forth from the middle east).  Unless I can fabricate a
circuit card just large enough to fit in the PCI slot and then use a cable
to pull it up into a free 1U space, then break in back out into a card
slot... (A plot is forming in my head)  I do have 1U free in the 6U
toughbox, and it could just as well be a dedicated external PCI card case,
lol.  There's probably issues with signal timing and attentuation if the PCI
bus gets longer than a few inches, though.

What sort of case do you have your boards in?  I do appreciate the very-low
power draw of the Migrus C787-1.5G, and heat was never an issue even in the
worst Mesopotamia had to offer.  The whole setup (VSAT satellite receiver,
UPS, ethernet switch, active power distribution, servers with two 3.5" SATA
drives each, and one shared monitor) pulls under 1 amp in total and never
hiccupped using filthily transformed 220V --> 110V, 50Hz electricity.  I
expected at least *one* device to demand 60Hz but I was fortunately wrong.

I was able to provide unfiltered internet access to my fellow servicemembers
- the US military blocks services such as myspace.com, yahoo instant
messenger (and of course, pr0n) over the network they provide for morale,
but most of the people there are young and can't live without.

JC