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Aureal 3D Developing Linux Drivers
Guy Saban writes "I've just received news that Aureal 3D plans on releasing Linux drivers for their Vortex sound cards in February. These cards have a good reputation for quality sound and 3D effects. The A3D technology for creating realistic acoustic effects has become a favorite among many. Apparently 4Front Technologies are working on drivers for the Vortex 1 and 2 chipsets under Linux through their OpenSound package.
"
according to This FAQ, the driver isn't open source, but they're working on it.
Krishna
> When I install the drivers make install10 I get /lib/.../au8810.o: init module: Device
> the error
> or Resource busy
Hmm. As sort of a rough, lousy guess, I'd see if something sound-card-related was installed already. Maybe when you installed Linux, some stub sound module or something was installed. My suggestions:
First off, make sure that au8810.o didn't actually get installed. I know that the error message implies that it wasn't installed, but I'd run "find / -name 'au8810.o'" anyway, just out of paranoia, to double-check.
Second, reboot and check the messages that you see on startup, like "Checking for sound module . . . [ OK ]." My guess is that if you see "OK," there's a problem and *some* sound module is installed, even if it's not working. You probably should want to see "Checking for sound module . . . [FAILED]," or something like that.
I'm not sure whether this will seriously help or not. I'm just going by hunches and little observations I made when I installed OSS a few months ago. (I've since installed Aureal's drivers today, and except for some MIDI-related stuff, it seems to work fine.)
I'm curious if these drivers support SMP kernels. I bought an SB Live instead of the Vortex because all the Windows NT drivers that Aureal have released show freaky stuff on multiprocessing machines, like long delays, samples being cut off in the middle, or blue screens. There's now supposedly a beta driver that tries to fix that but I haven't seen confirmations that it works. I'm wondering if their Linux driver has been tested for this too.
Same thing from me. I bought an Aureal card, couldn't get it to work, so I took it back and got a Creative card. And I sent e-mail to Aureal telling them they lost a sale cause they didn't support Linux.
:)
I think stuff like that adds up and they're getting the message.
No, the drivers come with a binary-only object file for interfacing with the card, as well as a kernal interface layer for which they provide the source.
In fact, the interface layer is basically a reworked AudioPCI driver.
It also looks like the binary-only object is very similar to their Windows code...
strings asp30.o includes the following:
Software\Aureal\Vortex\AU8830\InstallSettings
Software\Aureal\Vortex\AU8830\ControlPanel
EnableSpdifIn
DetectSpdifIn
EnableSpdifOut
DetectSpdifOut
The phrase "yeahright" also comes up a bunch of times.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I'm not sure I understand what is so terribly difficult for someone in that company to simply recompile the modules for every kernel rev that comes out. It's not like that we have a new kernel rev every day. Gee, how terrible: someone actually has to type 'make' every other month, or so
Actually, things depend also on the kernel configuration.
For example, modules compiled for SMP kernels won't work on non-SMP kernels and vice-versa, and this is not the only issue. Someone on the kernel mailing list estimated that one should offer something in the order of tens of different binaries for a single module for various configurations.
It shouldn't be too problematic to put up a page with a form to choose different configurations for some kernel versions (and perhaps compile it on the fly before downloading), but it's still a pain for the inexperienced user who don't know even what a module is loaded in first instance and expects its installation process to just recognize as much hardware as possible, otherwise he gets stuck.
My 0.02 Euro.
It is GPL, I have the driver but haven't tried it yet. I'll have to remove my GUS and put my Montego back in. Hopefully it won't send a nasty pop to my speakers like the GUS drivers.
The source code is included. The filename is vortex.c, which is a ~64KB file. A Makefile is also included (`make compile` will recompile your driver).
There are a lot of people here complaining that it's closed source, etc.
They are wrong, very wrong. Aureal have done exactly what we wanted. We now have completely GPLed drivers, which appear to be much better than the OSS I bought a while back (cannot record, no gameport support, much etc.).
I just took a closer look, and the source for the .o files is not included.
I guess I jumped the gun. My apologies.
They are promising full source, though.
Check out this link.
Here's a "quote":
(Emphasis mine).
Last I recalled, GPL happens to be open source.
Now I wonder how long it'll take to be distributed in the kernel releases.
4Front have had drivers for Vortex in OpenSound for the last half a year, and they worked quite well for the week one is allowed to test them. The OpenSound package + Aureal drivers costed $30 however, so you might as well have bought a Soundblaster PCI 128 (yes, the Aureals are better, but the OpenSound drivers don't have any of the features anyways).
Now Aureal have finally come through and released real drivers for the kernel (better late then never, but still to late to be easily forgiveable). According the the email they sent me about this (I have been hounding them about the lack of Linux drivers for a while) they will go on to OpenSource the drivers as well (I think the page says as much).
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Has anybody else here had that kind of experience leading to the use of some other sound cards besides Aureal's stuff?
When the heck will the A3D sound stuff work with Q3A? I thought that's more of a vestige from the programming with the Windows edition of Q3A, knowing that Aureal didn't do a thing for the A3D 3D sound stuff for linux yet.
--
According to Alan Cox it progressing nicely, but it won't be part of the kernel before 2.4.xx (It's not part of 2.3.xx yet also).. -- /* Manuël Beunder, web master of the Linux SB Live! page: http://www.euronet.nl/~mailme .
What does this mean for ALSA support? Will the drivers released by Aureal give use the information we need to develop our own?
Salmon, Broads & Beer
Northwest journal fo
I've tried the drivers w/ 2.2.15pre3 and they seem to work ok. I've got sound and no oopses yet :p
The driver requires soundcore ("Sound card support") which can be compiled as module.
The drivers made by 4front seem less stable (three oopses for me) and also cost money.
Looking forward to seeing A3D in the future, and hopefully 100% Open Source drivers.
There was a thread on binary module compatibility on linux-kernel last month.
The short summary is this: it ain't gonna happen. Search the mailing list archives for the details.
I'm not sure I understand what is so terribly difficult for someone in that company to simply recompile the modules for every kernel rev that comes out. It's not like that we have a new kernel rev every day. Gee, how terrible: someone actually has to type 'make' every other month, or so.
This seems to me to be very logical. If you want to keep your module source closed, you can go ahead and do that, but then it becomes your sole responsibility to maintain your binary-only driver.
It seems that companies simply are looking for a free lunch. They want to keep their source closed, but then they also don't want to actively maintain their driver. Well, that's just not going to fly. If you want someone else to make sure that your module works in the next kernel rev, and you don't want that to be your responsibility, well, that's fine, but you'll have to open your source. Seems a fair tradeoff to me.
--
I'm one of the people that was harassing (no, not really, actually politely emailing) back and forth with Aureal tech and management people at least a year ago trying to convince them to release Linux drivers and/or specs to write drivers. It actually does make a difference... admittedly, we have Creative to thank for this in a way, since releasing, then Open Sourcing the SB Live drivers forces Aureal's hand, it only forces Aureal's hand BECAUSE they know there is a significant undercurrent of interest in using Linux with their products BECAUSE people like myself and others have been lobbying them for ages. Too bad I trashed my Aureal Vortex 6 months ago in favor of an SB Live. :) Guess Aureal should have moved faster...
There are plans to support other operating systems besides Windows 9x and Windows NT. Currently, we are working on WDM drivers, but plans are already underway on working with different companies on Linux and BeOS drivers. We have been in contact with Be on getting supporting for the Vortex chipsets, and hopefully will follow through on that shortly.
There are no definite plans or release dates scheduled for these drivers, however, and there are no guarantees.
I's sure glad some folks out there deliver without expressed guarantees. The drivers can be found at Aureal
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
There are binary tarballs available:
linux.aureal.com
I haven't tried them yet, though.
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