Re: [PATCH 00/11] Add AXD Audio Processing IP driver

From: Lars-Peter Clausen
Date: Tue Oct 28 2014 - 10:55:17 EST


On 10/28/2014 02:18 PM, Qais Yousef wrote:
On 10/28/2014 11:55 AM, Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Qais Yousef wrote:
AXD Audio Processing IP performs audio decoding, encoding, mixing,
equalisation,
synchronisation and playback.
What exactly do you mean with "synchronisation" and "playback"?

Synchronisation refers to accurate audio playout relative to a master
clock source including compensation of drift between the master clock
source and the playout clock of the audio hardware. Hence allowing
synchronised audio playout across multiple independent devices.

Playback simple refers to the fact that AXD is capable of managing audio
playout hardware like I2S and SPDIF interfaces.


It doesn't fit in alsa subsystem but I Cced them to confirm.
... because those two words sound like something that a sound card could do.

The problem mainly stems from the fact that we take a variety of
compressed audio as input and we could perform audio encoding. The
problem with the compressed audio is that the range of decoders and
configuration supported in alsa is limited and there's no support for
taking raw pcm and producing compressed output. I'm not an expert on
alsa but when I looked it looked like there's more infra structure
required.

[...]

This doesn't sound to different from any of the other supported audio DSPs. ALSA seems to have 95% of what you need. And the missing 5% is probably stuff that is not specific to your hardware but rather something that other hardware will need as well. The framework is not set in stone you can make modifications and add the features that are missing to make your hardware work.

E.g. look at sound/soc/intel/ for an example of a audio DSP.

No integrating this into ALSA will quite likely result in a quite messy situation for you on the long run.

- Lars



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