n00b first question

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babag
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n00b first question

Post by babag »

do interfaces require specialized firmware to be burned? it may be eight or ten years since i seriously looked at linux as an audio/video platform so i just no longer know. seem to remember, back before ffado was ffado that my (then) firepod was going to need its firmware to be altered to work with linux. wondering if that's still the case or if my (now) focusrite saffire pro 40 might work out of the box.

fwiw, i gave up back then, not because of the audio but because the rest of my work environment was too hard to cope with under linux. along with the audio and video, it all just became too cumbersome: many monitors, external audio interfaces, firewire cards, etc. now things seem different. with reaper, my current daw, getting closer and closer to having a really functional implementation, and black magic now releasing da vinci for linux, it seems a good time to re-investigate. would love to be able to make a switch.

thanks,
BabaG
varpa
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Re: n00b first question

Post by varpa »

Older versions of the focusrite saffire pro 40 can work well on linux but newest models have been redesigned and do not work completely. You best resource is ffado.org (see Pro40 warning on main page, and also check out the page under "Device Support"). I have an older Pro24 which works well with ffado for audio in, and midi in, but midi out does not work (but luckily I do not need midi out). At one point I put newer ffado firmware which fixed midi out but broke midi in. Luckily Focusrite sent me some program to allow reverting the firmware to an older version. Also the new linux kernels can support the Pro40 in alsa (in general all dice firewire devices), so ffado is not needed. However, alsa dice only supports sample sizes down to 128, which limits the latency you can achieve. But you can blacklist the alsa snd_dice daemon if you want and use ffado (which I do). You could test your Pro40 by running a linux distro like AVLinux by booting from a USB drive (by default it will use snd_dice, but that is sufficient for a test).
tseaver
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Re: n00b first question

Post by tseaver »

Do interfaces require specialized firmware to be burned? it may be eight or ten years since i seriously looked at linux as an audio/video platform so i just no longer know. seem to remember, back before ffado was ffado that my (then) firepod was going to need its firmware to be altered to work with linux. wondering if that's still the case or if my (now) focusrite saffire pro 40 might work out of the box
I'm not using Firewire, but the answer for USB interfaces is that if they run on OSX without drivers (i.e., they are USB class compliant), they work on Linux. Googling for "focusrite saffire pro 40 ffado" seems to suggest that older versions of the model work, but that the support broke somewhere in 2015 (maybe fixed since then?)

HTH,

Tres.
Ubuntu, Mixbus32C; acoustic blues / country / jazz
babag
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Re: n00b first question

Post by babag »

thanks for the replies so far!

so, sounds like i could avoid firmware burning by using als, which would be a software solution, but that might limit latency. ffado would be the alternative and is firmware which would require altering my interface's firmware. (not sure i'd want that as i may still dual boot.) do i have this right?

also, sounds like i need to find a way of determining which vintage of pro40 i have. i think it predates the issues but may fall within the window where the problems cropped up. anybody have any tips on how to determine whether a pro40 is pre or post issues?

thanks again,
BabaG
varpa
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Re: n00b first question

Post by varpa »

Sounds like your Pro40 is older so it likely works. The best way to see if it works is to boot kxstudio 14.04 from a USB drive or DVD and try to start the Pro40 as Jack firewire device. kxstudio 14.04 uses ffado, its kernel does not have the snd_dice support. ffado has some command line utilities to help debug things:
ffado-test Discover => Look for firewire devices
ffado-test ListDevices => Look for firewire devices
If you have problems send an email to the ffado-users email list (see ffado.org site), the ffado developers are very helpful.
babag
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Re: n00b first question

Post by babag »

checked the kxstudio site and it seems the only images i saw were dvd. i think i can try that but do you know if there are any for usb stick anyplace?

thanks,
BabaG
babag
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Re: n00b first question

Post by babag »

well, i just tried booting the kxstudio dvd and things froze during the boot process. got the logo and some dots below it but it froze there. thanks for the ideas but looks like, between this and the iffy focusrite, i won't be getting into this any time soon.

thanks again,
BabaG
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