Re: USB surround sound - what's my chances?
On Sun, 2004-02-08 at 02:49, Jonathan Melhuish wrote:
> Jonathan Melhuish wrote:
>
> > There's a logic3 5.1 surround sound USB sound card going on eBay,
> > which looks like exactly what I was after:
> > http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2785283904&category=3701&sspagename=STRK%3AMEBWA%3AIT&rd=1
> >
> >
> > But the question is, what's my chances of getting it working under
> > Debian?
>
> Okay, let me rephrase that. Are most USB soundcards generally standard
> "USB Audio" devices? Are surround sound ones usually just several "USB
> Audio" devices?
>
> I'm not looking for a definative answer here, just an idea of whether
> it's worth buying and selling on if it doesn't work.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jon
In theory... yes.
There is a USB-audio standard, and it's supported by ALSA.
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=USB&card=Generic&chip=Generic&module=usb-audio
However, going on personal experience with USB devices, the cheaper they
are, the more likely it seems the engineers didn't do their homework and
failed to follow specifications. (See mass-storage devices for the
occasional bad example where almost everyone follows the standard, and
USB modems for an example of where practically nobody does.)
The remote could be anything, depending mostly on if the engineer did in
hardware (which he should have) or left control up to software (which is
a bad thing). If it's a half and half option, say where the USB reciever
hooks in as a serial device, you may even be able to make use of lirc to
use it.
Let us know how it goes, and email the various hardware compatibility
lists with your results.
Regards
Edward
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