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Elk OS – Audio Operating System

elk.audio

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Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#21

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ssfrr wrote: post #13

Reminds me a lot of the Bela project [1]. The idea is that they expose the raw audio device interrupt handler so applications can do DSP processing without the kernel being involved at all. Wonder if this is doing something similar? [1] https://bela.io/

Bela does not expose the audio device interrupt to applications. Your code runs in the Xenomai RT kernel, which functions somewhat like a hypervisor. That means that your RT code doesn't run as part of Linux at all. It also means that you need to use Xenomai-specific techniques if you need to communicate with regular Linux application code.

You'd get more or less the same thing by writing a kernel module for Linux, which would also have to use somewhat specialized techniques for interacting with user space application code.

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#22

Post by snvzz »

slownews45 wrote: post #12
ctoth wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Hahah.. Funny to see this same comment about dropbox ($10B company)

The same Dropbox that once had a broken login form where a blank password let people in to any account?

Somebody's effort being successful isn't necessarily a good thing. See Facebook.

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#23

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

cmiller1 wrote: post #5

Interesting, I was actually looking into distros set up for audio recently because I was hoping to build a little jukebox r-pi or similar but noticed you'd have to recompile the kernel on the official pi distro to get full support for high-resolution audio

"high resolution audio" is a bit of a weasel phrase.

My RPi4 is quite happy doing what any audio engineer would consider "high resolution audio", no kernel recompile required.

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#25

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dokem wrote: post #17

Could I use this with PTP clock synchronization to create my own wireless speakers?

Elk seems to be pushing the RPi as the h/w platform. You will likely have a difficult time finding an RPi with an ethernet chipset capable of correctly doing PTP.

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#26

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Although things may change a bit with the arrival of Apple M1 systems, the marketing mentions of VST in this context are fairly weasely.

For users, good look finding more than a couple of plugin developers that make their plugins available for (a) a Linux based system AND (b) the ARM architecture.

For developers, VST is just an SDK, and doesn't require OS support in any meaningful way. So sure, if you want to create VST(3) plugins for a Linux+ARM platform, you can do that, with or without Elk.

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#27

Post by MrMan »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #26

Although things may change a bit with the arrival of Apple M1 systems, the marketing mentions of VST in this context are fairly weasely. For users, good look finding more than a couple of plugin developers that make their plugins available for (a) a Linux based system AND (b) the ARM architecture. For developers, VST is just an SDK, and doesn't require OS support in any meaningful way. So sure, if you want to create…

Its a great project. It's intended to help hardware makers bring pro audio gear to market with less cost and less risk. Not as a retail vst host.

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#28

Post by mwcampbell »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #20
andrewflnr wrote: post #18

When I saw the headline, I wondered/hoped if it was an OS with an audio/only UI. I'm sure this is cool, but a fully thought-out audio-only UI would be fascinating.

I started developing a blind computing system in the late 80s based on a BBC Micro and a very early speech synthesizer. It never went anywhere, and I'm no longer in contact with the blind friend who was helping me, but I often wonder if today's solutions such as Apple's Voiceover aren't the ideal solution. They seem to be trying to adapt the GUI for the blind, rather than trying to build a text/voice based system fro…

As a legally blind developer who has worked on accessibility for a while (see my HN profile for more), I'm inclined to agree with you. We use screen readers like VoiceOver because, practically, we often need to access mainstream applications. But I think we tend to get too dogmatic about going mainstream, to the point that some of us are disdainful toward systems designed specifically for blind people, particularly if they involve custom hardware. I've thought about developing a Linux desktop environment with a shell that's designed specifically for TTS, but that also includes a more conventional screen reader for running GUI applications.

Do you remember which speech synthesizer you were working with in the 80s?

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#29

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

jancsika wrote: post #6

> 1ms round-trip Ooh, a rare latency claim that actually specifies which type of latency they mean! One millisecond round-trip latency, if true in practice, is quite impressive. I'm going to continue reading now... :)

I’ve never understood the latency requirement for professional gear, are you able to articulate why there’s a need for lower latency than average consumer gear?

Re: Elk OS – Audio Operating System

#30

Post by dokem »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #25
dokem wrote: post #17

Could I use this with PTP clock synchronization to create my own wireless speakers?

Elk seems to be pushing the RPi as the h/w platform. You will likely have a difficult time finding an RPi with an ethernet chipset capable of correctly doing PTP.

I don't think you need the sub-microsecond resolution PTP compatible PHYs offer. I was hoping to get away with software timestamping which I believe should still give you sub ms synchronization.

My real question, I guess, is how in sync do the speakers need to be? Just on the order of human perception, or do we need them to be in phase?

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