Hi Fred, On 11/23/20 7:30 AM, you wrote: > On Nov 22, 2020, at 19:21, David Klann <dxkl...@pm.me > <mailto:dxkl...@pm.me>> wrote: > >> This *seems* like a reasonable approach! But ... the hitch is that the >> ALSA driver also uses the Audio Science firmware blobs. The snd-asihpi >> driver expects firmware files to be in /lib/firmware/asihpi. And as soon >> as I drop the file "dsp5000.bin" (the firmware for the 5020 card) into >> that directory Rivendell seems to "see" it and RDAdmin->Manage >> Hosts->[hostname]->Audio Resources reports that the Audio Science driver >> is loaded (even though I've explicitly blacklisted the asihpi driver): >> >> SUPPORTED AUDIO DRIVERS >> AudioScience HPI [4.14.03] >> JACK Audio Connection Kit [Generic] >> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) [1.1.8] >> >> Note that even though I have the latest hpklinux driver package loaded >> (4.20.10-1.el7.centos from the Paravel repo), it appears to be picking >> up the version info from the firmware blob. >> >> I realize that I can move the firmware blob out of /lib/firmware/asihpi >> and load the snd-asihpi driver *after* Rivendell has started. That *kind >> of* works. >> >> Do you have any other thoughts on my understanding about what's >> happening with the firmware blob? > > You’re right! I’d forgotten all about the firmware aspect. > > This is going to be a tough one to manage in any kind of way that avoids > weird, one-off processes. The firmware is absolutely needed by all ASI > cards to work (regardless if it’s via HPI or ALSA). It would > theoretically be possible to implement HPI support in a way that would > merely use the firmware supplied by the ALSA package, but that is going > to run into version issues sooner or later (the firmware supplied by > CentOS is typically quite old compared to the current version being > shipped by ASI; which often means that newer model cards will not work > with it). Perhaps we could provide an update to the CentOS firmware > package with the current ASI firmware? > > Another possible approach would be to make the HPI driver a ‘soft’ > dependency (similar to the way the MPEG libraries are handled). That > would involve some code changes in Rivendell. > > No easy answers here I fear. >
Thanks for your thoughts on this. So far it's mainly an "academic project", but there was enough about it that was compelling to me that I thought I'd follow through with it. I've got it working, though it's a very manual process right now. It's kind of fun seeing the ASI card in the JACK connection graph, and now I can send the output from RDAirplay to both the studio console *and* the stream encoder (thanks for GlassCoder too!) without a super convoluted setup (well, I guess everything is relative... :) The only other oddity is that since the ASI 5020 card is *so old*, I haven't found any recent firmware -- it's at 4.14.03, which works, but ... Thanks! ~David > Cheers! > > > |---------------------------------------------------------------------| > | Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer | > | | Paravel Systems | > |---------------------------------------------------------------------| > | A room without books is like a body without a soul. | > | | > | -- Cicero | > |---------------------------------------------------------------------| _______________________________________________ Rivendell-dev mailing list Rivendell-dev@lists.rivendellaudio.org http://caspian.paravelsystems.com/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
