1    Alsa driver for Digigram miXart8 and miXart8AES/EBU soundcards
2	    Digigram <alsa@digigram.com>
3
4
5GENERAL
6=======
7
8The miXart8 is a multichannel audio processing and mixing soundcard
9that has 4 stereo audio inputs and 4 stereo audio outputs.
10The miXart8AES/EBU is the same with a add-on card that offers further
114 digital stereo audio inputs and outputs.
12Furthermore the add-on card offers external clock synchronisation
13(AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code and Video Synchro)
14
15The mainboard has a PowerPC that offers onboard mpeg encoding and
16decoding, samplerate conversions and various effects.
17
18The driver don't work properly at all until the certain firmwares
19are loaded, i.e. no PCM nor mixer devices will appear.
20Use the mixartloader that can be found in the alsa-tools package.
21
22
23VERSION 0.1.0
24=============
25
26One miXart8 board will be represented as 4 alsa cards, each with 1
27stereo analog capture 'pcm0c' and 1 stereo analog playback 'pcm0p' device.
28With a miXart8AES/EBU there is in addition 1 stereo digital input
29'pcm1c' and 1 stereo digital output 'pcm1p' per card.
30
31Formats
32-------
33U8, S16_LE, S16_BE, S24_3LE, S24_3BE, FLOAT_LE, FLOAT_BE
34Sample rates : 8000 - 48000 Hz continuously
35
36Playback
37--------
38For instance the playback devices are configured to have max. 4
39substreams performing hardware mixing. This could be changed to a
40maximum of 24 substreams if wished.
41Mono files will be played on the left and right channel. Each channel
42can be muted for each stream to use 8 analog/digital outputs separately.
43
44Capture
45-------
46There is one substream per capture device. For instance only stereo
47formats are supported.
48
49Mixer
50-----
51<Master> and <Master Capture> : analog volume control of playback and capture PCM.
52<PCM 0-3> and <PCM Capture> : digital volume control of each analog substream.
53<AES 0-3> and <AES Capture> : digital volume control of each AES/EBU substream.
54<Monitoring> : Loopback from 'pcm0c' to 'pcm0p' with digital volume
55and mute control.
56
57Rem : for best audio quality try to keep a 0 attenuation on the PCM
58and AES volume controls which is set by 219 in the range from 0 to 255
59(about 86% with alsamixer)
60
61
62NOT YET IMPLEMENTED
63===================
64
65- external clock support (AES/EBU, Word Clock, Time Code, Video Sync)
66- MPEG audio formats
67- mono record
68- on-board effects and samplerate conversions
69- linked streams
70
71
72FIRMWARE
73========
74
75[As of 2.6.11, the firmware can be loaded automatically with hotplug
76 when CONFIG_FW_LOADER is set.  The mixartloader is necessary only
77 for older versions or when you build the driver into kernel.]
78 
79For loading the firmware automatically after the module is loaded, use a
80install command.  For example, add the following entry to
81/etc/modprobe.d/mixart.conf for miXart driver:
82
83	install snd-mixart /sbin/modprobe --first-time -i snd-mixart && \
84			   /usr/bin/mixartloader
85(for 2.2/2.4 kernels, add "post-install snd-mixart /usr/bin/vxloader" to
86 /etc/modules.conf, instead.)
87
88The firmware binaries are installed on /usr/share/alsa/firmware
89(or /usr/local/share/alsa/firmware, depending to the prefix option of
90configure).  There will be a miXart.conf file, which define the dsp image
91files.
92
93The firmware files are copyright by Digigram SA
94
95
96COPYRIGHT
97=========
98
99Copyright (c) 2003 Digigram SA <alsa@digigram.com>
100Distributable under GPL.
101