oss_madi(7)

💅 oss_madi 💅

okay so bestie, this is the manual page for oss_madi from section 7 of the OSS Devices manual, and it's literally all about the RME HDSP MADI and AES32 audio driver. grab a snack, we're going in 🍓

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🌟 NAME 🌟

oss_madi — the RME HDSP MADI and AES32 audio driver. that's it, that's the vibe. 💖

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Open Sound System driver for RME HDSP MADI and AES32 audio interfaces. slay.

So the tea is: this driver was developed for the RME HDSP MADI, but it also supports HDSP AES32. and it's been tested under Linux and Solaris, on both x86 and Sparc. versatile queen 👑

The internal engine of the card supports 64 playback channels and 64 recording channels. But — and this is important — only the first channels are actually connected to the real input and output ports of the card. the rest are just... there. lurking. 🙈

The mixer section of the card has recording level settings for all inputs, and there's also an output mixer. Each output channel gets mixer sliders for the corresponding input channel and the corresponding audio playback channel. very hands-on, very customizable 💅

There is a full 64x(64+64) mixing matrix supported by the hardware. BUT — for the time being, this mixer matrix cannot be accessed directly by applications. 😭 However, support for the SNDCTL_MIX_MATRIX_WRITE and SNDCTL_MIX_MATRIX_READ ioctl calls can be added in the future. so like, watch this space, iykyk ✨

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🦋 DEVICE FILES 🦋

By default the driver will create input and output device files for each 32 stereo pairs. and yes, you can change that by editing the settings in oss_madi.conf (see below, bestie, i got you 💖).

The application can set the devices to use 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64 channels. The device file being used selects the first channel slot within the available channels. For example pcm0 and pcmin0 will select channel 0. Equally well pcm1 and pcmin1 will select channel slot 2 (assuming that madi_devsize option is set to 2). The first device (pcm0 and pcmin0) can be set to use up to 64 channels. The last devices (pcm31 and pcmin31) only support 1 or 2 channel mode. The other device files support channel configurations where the last channel doesn't exceed the number of total channels (madi_maxchannels). Also the driver will not let two device files share any of the channels with some other open device file. no sharing, no overlap, we respect boundaries here 🫶

This channel allocation mechanism gives maximum flexibility to the user. It is possible to use some output channels by multi channel application while the others are available for other applications. This works as long the channel allocations by different applications don't overlap. main character energy for your whole audio setup, fr fr 🔥

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• madi_maxchannels

Number of channels supported by the driver. The default is 64, which is also the maximum. This parameter can be set to a lower value if full 64 channels are not required. With less channels the mixer/control panel interface will require less space on screen. smaller setup, tidier screen, we love a clean aesthetic ✨

• madi_devsize

By default this parameter is set to 2, which means that a device file will be created for each stereo channel pair. Possible values are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64. pick your fighter 💅

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😭 LIMITATIONS 😭

okay bestie, here's the part where we keep it real:

• The current driver doesn't support all control panel features of the card. For example sampling rate is fixed to 48 kHz. More features will be added on contract. so like, it's giving "work in progress, but make it professional" 💀
• Use of mmap() is and will not be supported. not now, not ever. periodt. 🚫
• Virtual mixer is not supported (yet). the "yet" is doing so much heavy lifting here 🙈

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🌈 FILES 🌈

• /etc/oss4/conf/oss_madi.conf — device configuration file. the one file to rule them all 👑

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

4Front Technologies. iconic. no notes. 💜

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🧚 lowkey obsessed with how much this little card can do. go forth and configure, bestie, you got this.

and that's the whole page! this cutie came to you as oss_madi(7) — shoutout to the OSS Devices manual, dated 11 February 2015. mwah 💋🎀