On Mon, 2006-04-03 at 18:53 -0500, Timothy Miller wrote: > Since we're having a bit of a lull in the discussions on OGML, I > thought I might start off a discussion about some ideas I've had that > would benefit the Linux community as well as give OGP and Traversal a > boost financially. > > The Open Graphics Project has gotten everyone involved a lot of > attention. While it's still possible to get graphics cards supported > by open source drivers, that supply is dwinding. At the rate things > are going, we'll soon have no choices left. Politically and socially, > the OGP is a great idea. Economically, however, it's entirely a > different story. Because of the development and costs involved, > low-end graphics is actually not such a great place to start. The > attention we get because we want to do graphics is a major driving > force, but there are much better ways to get our stream of funds > started. > > One such idea that's been brought up before is ultra high end audio. > The low-end is solved; it's called AC97 and is found in every PC > chipset you can buy today. But imagine taking what would normally > cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in audio recording and > production equipment and applying the open source model to it. > Designing and producing a low-end commodity product is hard. But > designing a niche audio product that sold competitively for thousands > of dollars is relatively easy to pull off. To begin with, we now > become much less cost-sensitive for parts, so the end product can be > FPGA-based. That makes OGD1 an ideal development platform for a new > audio device; in fact, it's major overkill. Once the new design is > finished, we'd mass-produce a new board using a smaller FPGA and > include all of the audio I/O hardware directly on-board. > > I know basically nothing about audio technology. But given what > little I do know, here are some things that I think would be > relatively easy to do with OGD1 and, what shall we call it, OAC1: > - 60+ audio channels (pick your combination of in and out) > - (A specialized card could handle lots more channels) > - 24-bit precision per channel > - Sample rates in the hundreds of kilohertz > - Thousands of audio samples and MIDI instruments > - Sample-based and algorithmically-generated sound-effects > - Fourier analysis, band filters, mixing, and other sorts of math > stuff that if I could name it, you'd be impressed > - Noise-free signals (because we have experience with graphics) > - Accelerated "3D sound" > - Accelerated compression/decompression > - Lots of other things >
...mhh In professional environment those thing are quite unusefull take a look at this http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/ what is really needed is Low Noise (internal pci card are not a good idea, usb or fire-wire are preferred) 8 or + channels whith 24 bit resolution at 96 Khz every channel with analogue and digital io ! an internal control matrix, to route every input on every output ! I have some "sound engineer" (free software entusiast) friends, I can ask for some suggetsion ! > Given hardware acceleration for most parts of audio processing, plus > some excellent piece of open source sound studio software, I don't see > why we couldn't produce a combination that is as good as or better > than what you find in music recording studios, television stations, > and every other place where you might find a need for this. Imagine > how much money this could save musicians. The only thing we can't > provide is the recording room with the proper accoustics. > > If a reduced version of the card sold for $1000, we'd have more than a > few gamers and multimedia enthusiasts buying it for their 50-speaker > surround-sound reality-immersion systems. > > Were such a project started, I would have to carefully tune my > involvement. Since Howard, Andy, and I do not have a background in > audio technology, it would probably be best for someone with > appropriate experience to lead. But if the community can spec this > product and help us design it (we can put into hardware any algorithm > you specify), Traversal can produce it. The whole project, from start > to finish, would be developed under GPL. This would be quite a major > effort, due to the requirement for more than just drivers. Unlike the > OGP, which started out of a corporation and has retained some of that > flavor, the OAP would have to organize itself and push itself along. > In my mind, the first major problem is getting the right people in the > community together to develop the specs. > > > So, what do you all think of this idea? Comments? Suggestions? > Discussion! :) > _______________________________________________ > Open-graphics mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics > List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) -- Michele Carla` <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
