Firewire audio cards under linux are supported via "freebob" that is a driver for jackd. http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page

you'll need to compile a lot of stuff by yourself from source (libraw1394, libavc1394, libiec61883): http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/Compiling_from_SVN_HOWTO

not every Firewire audiocard is supported, see this page for a list of known working devices: http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index.php/List_of_Supported_Devices

If you go this way stick with Fedora + CCRMA because is the system used by freebob developers and you can easily get small latency (2,6 msec).

Be aware that is still somehow experimental.

ciao, davide.

----- Original Message ----- From: "julien breval" julienbreval@free.fr To: pd-list@iem.at Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 3:19 PM Subject: [PD] [1/2 OT] Laptop audio interface choice under Linux

Hello

I just want to be sure, that the RME Multiface type PCMCIA cards are still the best choice under Linux. I want to buy a new laptop, running under either Linux or OS X (I'm tired of the IRQ and ACPI problem on Windows XP), but don't know which laptop/OS/interface combination will give the best performance (lowest latency and constant reliability are the most important points for me).

As far as I know the IEEE1394 cards like the RME Fireface 400 are not supported under Linux, while the PC Card 2 connector is progressively disappearing on new laptops ... If you needed a new music laptop for live concerts with a MIDI keyboard and Pure Data (used for example as a polyphonic sampler), what would you choose ? I'm quite confused these days ...

Regards, Julien

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Unfortunately none of these interfaces looks like the right one for me. The Presonus Firebox and the Terratec Phase x24 could be ok, but I was rather looking for something like the RME Fireface 400 - To put it differently, I'm not sure if these two cards have the same sound quality and reliability as RME or MOTU ones. If anyone use them, please tell me about the results you get.

I'm very happy with my Terratec Phase 24FW but I can't compare it to a RME because I never owned one, so I can't tell you if it's as good...

The main problem is to find a laptop on which the Linux installation won't freeze after launching x11. On the one I have currently, no distribution could be installed. I believe I have to add or remove something to x11.conf but there is very few information about it. In the past I have used Red Hat and CCRMA at 2.6 ms latency (Shuttle XPC) without any problem.

I have a very cheap laptop: HP nx6110, celeron M, GMA900. no problems at all, FC5 recognized everything and with a little effort I also have a dualhead 3D accelerated setup (so I can patch while GEM windows is running fullscreen). also ubuntu runs just fine on it. I suggest looking here before buying: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/

...

Be aware that is still somehow experimental.

Does it means, that I may get sound drops and variable reliability ? I need a simple setup, but as professional as my former Yamaha hardware sampler (1995) :) This machine had a polyphony of 64 btw, which is quite hard to get on a laptop (considering that latency has to be inferior to 5 ms)

It means that jackd sometimes crashes when I do strange and CPU intensive things, for example I am working on a flext external that does a lot of things in a different thread: sometimes when I run the separate thread jackd aborts.

Normally, once you have correctly configured jackd and the firewire port priority, you don't have xrun.

I don't think you'll have problems using it as a sampler, nontheless you might want to wait freebob to be "stable" and included in the official jackd distributions before using it on stage..