ESM(4)

📦 version 11.0, in nixpkgs unstable

💖 esm — hi bestie, meet your sound card's shyer sibling 💖

okay so real talk, you found the esm page in the Kernel Interfaces Manual (yes that's the whole manual, we're doing kernel land today 🎀), and it's literally about the ESS Technology Maestro 2/2E PCI Audio Accelerator audio device driver. say that five times fast, i dare you 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

like, the whole configuration vibe is this, no cap:

esm*   at pci? dev ? function ?
audio* at audiobus?

that's it. that's the config. iconic 💫

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the esm device driver is the one holding it down for sound cards built on the ESS Technology Maestro, Maestro-2, and Maestro-2E PCI AC97 Audio Accelerator chips — specifically ES1968 and ES1978. those are the chip names, memorize them, they matter 🧚

and the way that these Maestro chips have power management capabilities?? that's exactly why they're often chilling inside laptop and notebook systems. low-power king behavior 👑

the Maestro is a full-duplex device, meaning it can play and record at the same time, independently — playback and recording both, at sample rates anywhere from 4000 Hz all the way up to 48 kHz. and the sound processor itself is out here handling and converting 8 and 16 bit mono and stereo data. versatile. multitalented. main character energy fr fr 🔥

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go touch some other pages, bestie, they're all linked up:

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

the esm device driver appeared in NetBSD 1.6. a lil retro, a lil vintage, we respect the heritage 🎀

💀 BUGS 💀

okay so this is the part where we're honest with each other 🙈

  • currently, this driver only supports 16-bit mono recording — an unknown bug causes stereo recording to miss a channel. like it just. drops one. rude 😭
  • also not supported yet: hardware volume settings, MIDI, and joystick input.
so bestie, if your stereo recording sounds like it's missing a whole side — that's not you, that's the known bug. it's documented, it's real, it's in the manpage 💅

🫶 a lil sign-off 🫶

this cutie of a page came from Debian, dated June 22, 2005, and it's the ESM(4) page — go forth and record in mono, bestie, i believe in you 💖✨🍓

📦 where this page comes from