On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Nick Guenther <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Jacob Meuser <[email protected]> wrote: >> the alsa driver looks to be a complete driver that has nothing to do >> with any of the usb standards based drivers for audio or midi. one >> of the copyright holders on the alsa driver has an @caiaq.de email >> address. http://caiaq.de doesn't have much info, but it says >> "hardware development". I'm guessing these guys (caiaq.de) developed >> this hardware and the drivers. why it doesn't use the usb audio and >> midi standards though, I cannot answer. > > Well because this just seems so braindead I'm bugging Native > Instruments and the @caiaq.de guy; I'll let you all know if any useful > info comes out of that.
Amazingly he responded within an hour of me emailing him! He says the reason for the proprietary protocol is that the cards are 6 years old and appearently USB audio drivers in all the various OSes weren't good enough for "pro" use. That's annoying these days but acceptable, I think. I still kind of want to trade it in but it's looking like there might not be any other 4in/4out USB soundcard that's suitable (they're all either too complex or appear to be old so probably need custom drivers).
