Indigo Audio

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2 total messages Started by Donald Kennedy Fri, 31 Jul 1992 23:40

#65

Author: Donald Kennedy
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 23:40

19 lines
1362 bytes

According to several sources, there are several commercial organizations
planning on creating audio hardware/software that can support multiple
channels of digital audio and virtual MIDI channels. I believe AudioFrame
was a company quoted as planning to support the Indigo as a controller for
their digital audio systems, replacing DOS based systems. I had also read
that SGI was basically discouraging end-user DSP development for the
on-board 56001, instead encouraging DSP software development on the host
processor. I thought this was a little strange, considering the 56001's
potential as an audio processor in tandem with the MIPS processor.

Don Kennedy
 


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Re: Indigo Audio

#66

Author: Gints Klimanis
Date: Sat, 01 Aug 1992 00:06

33 lines
2086 bytes

In article <1992Jul31.234056.14421@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
Donald.Kennedy@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Donald Kennedy) writes:
|> According to several sources, there are several commercial
|> organizations
|> planning on creating audio hardware/software that can support
|> multiple
|> channels of digital audio and virtual MIDI channels. I believe
|> AudioFrame
|> was a company quoted as planning to support the Indigo as a
|> controller for
|> their digital audio systems, replacing DOS based systems. I had also
|> read
|> that SGI was basically discouraging end-user DSP development for the
|> on-board 56001, instead encouraging DSP software development on the
|> host
|> processor. I thought this was a little strange, considering the
|> 56001's
|> potential as an audio processor in tandem with the MIPS processor.

In SGI audio machines, audio is a system resource.  The 56001 manages
four stereo (or mono) ports from independent applications(choose input
or output) and the data buffers that feed them.  All output ports are
summed to saturation. Unfortunately, most of the 56001 is consumed to
run this audio system.  

We wanted to make audio a reliable system resource for all applications.
So, temporarily punting the audio system for user development is not in
our philosophy. The 56001 may be replaced by some other DSP or no DSP in
future machines.  The SGI audio system will maintain current
functionality with more audio abilities added in future machines.

Please keep in mind that SGI Indigo has a chip to offload some graphics
operations from the CPU.

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