New A-EON Music Card for Classic Amigas

[nicholas]

Nice news for Classic lovers, but there are bigger news :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAq23xRiISI

"Bigger" is subjective, I'd wager that more Prisma soundcards get sold than all OS4 motherboards combined.

@Matthew,

Any hint on a rough price for one of these babies?

@Ian

Will the decoding be compatible with already existing software (mpeg.device etc) and/or will it come with datatypes for the formats it supports?

[nicholas]

It's something we're looking into, definitely. I've not looked at the mpeg library for a while so can't remember the API.. but it would be nice to be widely supported by existing software as well as the new programs!

Sounds great, will hardware documentation be available for 3rd party developers?

[nicholas]

We're talking about a $5 (max) audio decoder chip and a (probably cheap) CPLD to interface that chip over I2S to Zorro/Clockport. Admittedly CPLD programming and AmigaOS software drivers will be a disproportionate cost, but €200 is still going to be a bit on the high side, IMO.

For fifty quid I'd buy one instantly.  Any more and I'd struggle to justify the cost.

I got given an el-cheapo USB soundcard a couple of years ago and thought I might use it with my Deneb when I eventually get around to it.

Not sure if it's compatible mind you so one of these Prisma cards is looking quite desirable, especially as it supports hardware accelerated decoding.

I'm wondering if it comes with a licence from Fraunhofer for the MP3 decoding?

Not that I give two sh1ts either way but there are some on here that will accuse A-EON/AmigaKit of being theives if they don't.

[nicholas]

There's a version of the chip that excludes mp3 capability, which leads me to conclude that the mp3 licensing cost is included in the chip cost - but of course that would be passed onto purchasers.

I agree that $50/£50 would be an upper bound for reasonable cost.

That's my argument for MPEG playback on Linux.  My video card has hardware decoding support so when I bought it it came with a licence to play stuff as far as I'm concerned so I'm not buying a software codec and paying twice for it.

[nicholas]

@nicholas
Everybody should be using OGG Vorbis files anyway. Completely free, open, smaller and better sounding. Kind of a win-win-win-win situation, really!

Yeah I rip most stuff to FLAC or Vorbis.  The only MP3's I have are the ones I erm "aquired".

For playing music files this will win hands-down over the Deneb sound card. I have one on my A4000 and although it works it takes a lot of CPU time, even on my CS-PPC 060. The Prisma's only workload is feeding the chip the compressed audio stream.

It sounds really good, I'm just concerned it will cost a fortune and then all the initial stock will get snapped up by hoaders who won't even use it. :/

[nicholas]

Yes, I'm "the guy"

Feel free to email me with ideas, suggestions and requests.

AHI is a possibility but not definite yet as the hardware is more geared to decoding than raw playing- but does support raw wav playback.

If there is no AHI driver I'd have to pass on it i'm afraid.  I don't fancy routing Paula's output into this thing and then routing the combined output into a 3rd soundcard that has an AHI driver.

[nicholas]

shouldnt it be actually solved via datatypes. in this case accelerated. if it was sdl should use them rather than statically linking to libs to make it more configuration independent.

Datatypes for all supported audio compression formats + an AHI driver would make it the complete package.  Anything less would seem a bit half-arsed.

[nicholas]

That looks simple enough, consider my request for datatypes withdrawn.

I wonder if Krashan would consider porting Reggae to 68k given a big enough bounty? That's assuming that it isn't reliant on MorphOS specific features.

[nicholas]

still this has to be called explicotely, no existing app will take advantage of it.



Sounds like hacking. If if theres is none then create reasonable abstraction instand to bind your implementation to the particular hardware, that will create another gap among amiga users and another app versions hell fort tue users to fight with..

An MHI driver might be a good option.

http://aminet.net/package/mus/play/mhi_dev

[nicholas]

Excellent news.

Is the AHI driver going to be ready at launch?

[nicholas]

I will have to consult with spirantho who is currently looking into the driver's possibilities.

Thanks.

It would be great to have both MHI and AHI support with a pass-through for Paula.