Based on kernel version 4.9. Page generated on 2016-12-21 14:37 EST.
1 Alsa driver for Digigram miXart8 and miXart8AES/EBU soundcards 2 Digigram <alsa@digigram.com> 3 4 5 GENERAL 6 ======= 7 8 The miXart8 is a multichannel audio processing and mixing soundcard 9 that has 4 stereo audio inputs and 4 stereo audio outputs. 10 The miXart8AES/EBU is the same with a add-on card that offers further 11 4 digital stereo audio inputs and outputs. 12 Furthermore the add-on card offers external clock synchronisation 13 (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code and Video Synchro) 14 15 The mainboard has a PowerPC that offers onboard mpeg encoding and 16 decoding, samplerate conversions and various effects. 17 18 The driver don't work properly at all until the certain firmwares 19 are loaded, i.e. no PCM nor mixer devices will appear. 20 Use the mixartloader that can be found in the alsa-tools package. 21 22 23 VERSION 0.1.0 24 ============= 25 26 One miXart8 board will be represented as 4 alsa cards, each with 1 27 stereo analog capture 'pcm0c' and 1 stereo analog playback 'pcm0p' device. 28 With a miXart8AES/EBU there is in addition 1 stereo digital input 29 'pcm1c' and 1 stereo digital output 'pcm1p' per card. 30 31 Formats 32 ------- 33 U8, S16_LE, S16_BE, S24_3LE, S24_3BE, FLOAT_LE, FLOAT_BE 34 Sample rates : 8000 - 48000 Hz continuously 35 36 Playback 37 -------- 38 For instance the playback devices are configured to have max. 4 39 substreams performing hardware mixing. This could be changed to a 40 maximum of 24 substreams if wished. 41 Mono files will be played on the left and right channel. Each channel 42 can be muted for each stream to use 8 analog/digital outputs separately. 43 44 Capture 45 ------- 46 There is one substream per capture device. For instance only stereo 47 formats are supported. 48 49 Mixer 50 ----- 51 <Master> and <Master Capture> : analog volume control of playback and capture PCM. 52 <PCM 0-3> and <PCM Capture> : digital volume control of each analog substream. 53 <AES 0-3> and <AES Capture> : digital volume control of each AES/EBU substream. 54 <Monitoring> : Loopback from 'pcm0c' to 'pcm0p' with digital volume 55 and mute control. 56 57 Rem : for best audio quality try to keep a 0 attenuation on the PCM 58 and AES volume controls which is set by 219 in the range from 0 to 255 59 (about 86% with alsamixer) 60 61 62 NOT YET IMPLEMENTED 63 =================== 64 65 - external clock support (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code, Video Sync) 66 - MPEG audio formats 67 - mono record 68 - on-board effects and samplerate conversions 69 - linked streams 70 71 72 FIRMWARE 73 ======== 74 75 [As of 2.6.11, the firmware can be loaded automatically with hotplug 76 when CONFIG_FW_LOADER is set. The mixartloader is necessary only 77 for older versions or when you build the driver into kernel.] 78 79 For loading the firmware automatically after the module is loaded, use a 80 install command. For example, add the following entry to 81 /etc/modprobe.d/mixart.conf for miXart driver: 82 83 install snd-mixart /sbin/modprobe --first-time -i snd-mixart && \ 84 /usr/bin/mixartloader 85 (for 2.2/2.4 kernels, add "post-install snd-mixart /usr/bin/vxloader" to 86 /etc/modules.conf, instead.) 87 88 The firmware binaries are installed on /usr/share/alsa/firmware 89 (or /usr/local/share/alsa/firmware, depending to the prefix option of 90 configure). There will be a miXart.conf file, which define the dsp image 91 files. 92 93 The firmware files are copyright by Digigram SA 94 95 96 COPYRIGHT 97 ========= 98 99 Copyright (c) 2003 Digigram SA <alsa@digigram.com> 100 Distributable under GPL.