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Aureal to release Linux drivers/source code

Posted by Hemos on from the another-vendor-on-the-side-of-mom-&-apple-pie dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "According to an article at GA-Source, Aureal Semiconductor will be releasing Linux drivers for their sound cards "much sooner than you think" along with the source code. " Excellent - coming on the heels of the Soundblaster announcement, things are going to be sounding much better.

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Re:One burning question... by Gleef · · Score: 4

    Well, Creative's Linux development page references both kernel issues and Alsa issues, so I suspect they will directly support both. If they don't, the source will be GPL, so it's not a big deal.

    Aureal, I don't know about. Currently they just refer Linux users to OpenSound.



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  2. Open Source Drivers as a Hardware Checkmark? by Effugas · · Score: 4

    Aureal has always been one of my favortie companies, and their recent announcement is quite intriguing.

    Much of the industry is obsessed with "meeting the marks"--x amount of video RAM, AGP/PCI/VLB(way back in the day), Direct3D, OpenGL, etc.

    Essentially, the complexities of various products are simplified down to a set of necessary functions supported and some "speed scale" created by a semiobjective source.

    Creative Labs' announcement signified not only a new level of support for Open Source driver development models, but also a relatively drastic turnaround in company policy. It wasn't that long ago that Creative was flatly refusing to open their drivers to anyone but OSS Sound Inc. under NDA. Now they're saying they'll support any and all comers, and even overcome the starting barriers(CVS/Bugzilla) so that development can begin ASAP.

    Such full fledged support is reserved only for items considered integral for the success of a product--in other words, a line item, a necessary feature.

    A checkmark.

    That Aureal(whose stock symbol always seems to confuse the hell out of every engine I check it with) is following suit means that, for the first time, not only Linux support but full, open access to driver development infrastructure is becoming a line item checkmark for a segment of the PC Hardware Expansion industry.

    Such developments bode well for future developers, who will hopefully not need to painfully reverse engineer nearly as much in their attempts to get network cards, 3D Graphics boards, or any other custom hardware to function now and long after a company decides to cease support for a given product.

    When ZD Net reports closed drivers as a downside to a given piece of hardware, we'll have truly won.

    However, it should be noted that while the SB Live is a full DSP architecture that developers should be able to exploit to unimaginable degrees(though I'm not expecting a Perl RegEx module using the SB Live *LOL*), much more content is hardcoded within the Aureal chipset. Indeed, this is a risk of a open development process--companies may feel that, to protect their intellectual property, they need to lock it up within the chipset instead of releasing it in the drivers.

    Of course, a chipset and a card that remains viable for significantly longer periods of time is far more appealing to both OEMs and consumers, and this is a benefit that both programmable circuitry and open development foster.

    This isn't to say, though, that I'm not extremely excited about Aureal's announcement. I first heard Aureal's A3D at WinHEC '97 a few years back, and it was the first time I had truly heard 3D Sound that actually worked. Aureal is one of the great stock price tragedies of the last few years, mainly because of some rather nasty innuendo and patent litigation. (Yes Virginia, that ugly USPTO spectre pops up again.) Their technology is sound(no pun intended), and their cards are uniformly high quality. I'm quite interested at seeing what the Linux community will do with access to the extensive 3D Sound modeling that Aureal has implemented--literal 3D environment models are used to determine reflections, reverbs, etc. It's all quite amazing, and very, very well implemented.

    It's definitely an interesting time to be a sound engineer in the computer industry. One thought--BeOS ought to be supporting some new very powerful sound processing cards very soon, if it doesn't support them already.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com