It’s not a multichannel-sorround, It would be just a 2-channel-stereo sound card that converts the USB signal in others digital audio signals (electric and/or optical) so that someone can connect their Hi-Fi or DVDplayer to their computers.
So… In particular, it would be a digital USB-to-SPDIF 24bit/96KHz and USB-to-AESEBU interface.
I can tell you that similar USB 1.1 (16bit/48KHz) devices work all with Linux also.
I’m not that sure about USB 2.0 interfaces.
I know that ALSA drivers go up to 24bit/96KHz and that for sure some of these devices work with Linux also, but I can’t tell anything about many others.
Now… These interfaces work with MacOSX, no-driver-required.
QUESTION: is it true that every audio interface that works on MacOSX without requiring any additional driver, will work also on Linux for sure?
I was told so once, by a friend of mine.
I can confirm that I configured an USB sound device (Xitel) in YaST > Hardware > Sound by choosing Generic from the left panel. There is then but one choice in the right panel: USB.
Thus I think that that all these USB sound devices use the same driver software.
Last done in openSUSE 11.2, but earlier levels worked the same.
I don’t know… My friends doesn’t speak about drivers but “calls” to the system and the kernel. He says that Mac and Linux use the same protocol or something like that. I’d like to understand more about this thing and to know whether he’s right or not.
These objects use different chips and convert the USB flow in different protocols… electric coaxial SPDIF, optical SPDIF, electric balanced (3-pin) AES-EBU, (different pins) I2S… So… Can they really use one single driver? Will “the” ALSA driver for these devices make all these different things work?
It is called Xitel HiFI-Link (USB 09ef:2907). No further specification. We have it allready about 4 years I think.
I can add that since then there were a few questions here about configuring USB sound devices on these Forums. I answered them pointing to the same YaST way to do this as above and in all cases that worked.
That is how the device identifies itself on the USB. You see that with
lsusb
The first part is a code for the manufacturer and the second part for the product.
Thus 09ef means Xitel and 2907 means HiFI-Link within Xitel. Those number/names combinations should be registered centraly somewhere and there is a copy (allmost up to date) on our system, which is used by tools like lsusb to show the name with the number. And the number is read from the device (according to the USB standard).
