FFADO approaches the 2.0 release [LWN.net]

By Forrest Cook
November 25, 2008

The FFADO (Free Firewire Audio Drivers) project allows the support of FireWire (IEEE 1394) audio devices under Linux:

The FFADO project aims to provide a generic, open-source solution for the support of FireWire based audio devices for the Linux platform. It is the successor of the FreeBoB project. FFADO is a volunteer-based community effort, trying to provide Linux with at least the same level of functionality that is present on the other operating systems. It is a work in progress, we are close, but we are not quite there yet.

The About document explains further: "We try to support any FireWire device available out there. The FFADO codebase is a framework that has been built with this in mind. This however doesn't mean that all FireWire devices work with FFADO. In order to support a device, we need cooperation from manufacturers, or somebody that want[]s to reverse engineer the protocol. Luckily we have support from the manufacturers of the three major platforms vendors build their devices around (BridgeCo, TC Applied Technologies and ECHO). The exact devices supported (or not supported) can be found on our device list."

Release candidate 1 of FFADO 2.0 was announced this week: "This release candidate is intended to collect feedback about the library under wide-spread usage. The code should be free of major bugs. We are looking for packagers that are interested in creating packages for their favorite distribution. Please contact us if you can help us out with this." Users of FreeBoB are encouraged to try this release out.

The full change Log shows the latest changes to the software, most of the work involves bug fixing. The feature list is also found there. Capabilities include:

Support for an unlimited number of 24-bit audio I/O channels.
Support for all device sample rates.
Support for an unlimited number of MIDI I/O channels.
Support for the S/PDIF audio interface format.
Support for the ADAT SMUX I/O format.
Support for external synchronization.
Support for internal mixers and other device controls.
Support for device aggregation on an externally synced bus.

The project documentation has more information. The installation notes from the FAQ pages explain how the various components of the software work together.

If your favorite application requires FireWire support, or you need to migrate away from the unsupported FreeBoB library, now would be a good time to give FFADO a try.

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