[ANNOUNCE] New Mixer Handling in PA 0.9.16/F12

Adam Williamson awilliam at redhat.com
Wed Jul 29 15:50:28 UTC 2009


On Wed, 2009-07-29 at 15:56 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Wed, 29.07.09 09:47, Jeff Garzik (jgarzik at pobox.com) wrote:
> 
> >> mixing is certainly the smallest part of it. Plese don't forget that
> >> mixing is not exactly the most complex operation on earth.
> >
> > Please don't forget that hardware mixing... is more than just mixing.  
> > Modern audio hardware can offload sample rate conversion, attenuation,  
> > 3D processing, and other goodies.
> 
> Interesting in which parallel universe you must be living.
> 
> Modern audio hardware is usually locked to a specific sample rate, got
> rid of all mixer controls by going to 24bit and letting the CPU
> attenuate using the 8bit extra headroom. And 3d processing, and other
> "goodies" aren't avilable in newer hw designs anymore either. In fact
> haven't been available since quite some time in any design
> anymore. (With the excption of those creative cards)
> 
> Just get over it, the new designs are really dumbed down but
> high-quality 24bit dacs. That's all. 

It may be easier to resolve this if both of you would say exactly what
hardware you're talking about...

for the sake of argument, my local PC store sells a range of cheap cards
that are just what Lennart says. For expensive consumer cards it has
several Asus cards (appear to be based on CMI chips), some AuzenTechs
(also CMI), and some HT Omegas (CMI again, I think I'm seeing a pattern
here  :>). The Asus cards claim specifically that they support
DirectSound in hardware. Aside from that, all the expensive cards make
loud claims about Dolby and/or DTS systems for multiplexing and
headphone processing, but don't make clear whether they're done in
hardware or software. I didn't see anything about hardware SRC, though
they probably wouldn't advertise that, it's hard to tell until you own
one. My card, a Chaintech AV-710, does do SRC in hardware (you can set
it to any output sampling rate you like, via the mixer), but you can't
buy it any more, it was discontinued.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net




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