On Nov 22, 2020, at 19:21, David Klann <[email protected]> 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.
Cheers!
|---------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Chief Developer |
| | Paravel Systems |
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| A room without books is like a body without a soul. |
| |
| -- Cicero |
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