kX Audio Driver (Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy series driver) OS X PPC porting project

[ITzTravelInTime]

This is a porting project to get the kx audio driver working on PPC macs running OS X Leopard.

The project is currently active on my github repo for my kx audio driver maintaining project, and it has it's dedicated branch, which you can find here: https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/kx-audio-driver/tree/PPC_Experimental

For more info about the driver check the first post of this thread, which ciontains some detailed info about the modding project this port is based on: https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/t...mod-sound-blaster-live-audigy-124rx-emu-edsp/

Also for now the project is focused on consumer level cards, but professional cards (from E-MU) could be supproted in the future, or may already work with current driver releases for powerpc (see the update posts).

UPDATE: The driver is now working and has been released, you can find the driver builds here: https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/kx-audio-driver/releases/tag/PPC_1.1

 

[reukiodo]

This is quite cool! I respect the enormous amount of time you must have put in to get this working. I have an old Audigy Live somewhere in storage and a few PPC Macs to try it out in. Might be a long while before getting to it though...

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Might be a long while before getting to it though...

Yes also because in the current state i can compile the driver and in theory i have done all the needed work for the PPC platform, but in practice the system will not load the driver because of some shenanigans with unknown symbols.

That said the work on the code just took me a couple of days and the code shared between intel and ppc actually works, so i think the problem might be with some intel-specific stuff i didn't spotted (also because the code for the driver is huge) or with some other stuff about back porting i didn't know.

Anyway thank you for your interest, as soon as i will have a working driver build i will pubblish it on github and link it here.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

I managed to put together the first driver build that actually loads on my g4 and has some features working, playback is still not working but at least we have a starting point to begin with trouble shooting.

Here is a screenshot:

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

so i think the problem might be with some intel-specific stuff i didn't spotted (also because the code for the driver is huge) or with some other stuff about back porting i didn't know.

The problem at the end was something with the compiler, as soon as i switched to compiling for ppc only using gcc 3.3 the driver loaded fine

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

I just want to tell you that work on this project contues, today i was busy aplying some small modification to the fork, I still didn't get playback working, but i am getting close, i have a better idea about how the sound card gets information about the sound buffers and i am slowely appling some patches to correct buffer quirks related to ppc macs being big endian when the driver is programmed just for little endian, i have still to figure out which are all the places in need of a patch but i am slowely making progress.

 

[Alb_rn]

Any progress? It's been a while since your last update

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Yes, despite several attempts i have been unable to get playback working.

 

[adam25255]

Yes, despite several attempts i have been unable to get playback working.

That’s pity. Do you know where is the problem?

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

not yet, i investigated various possibilities, but most likely it's all caused by some problem with the byte order being sawapped on ppc while storing stuff into ram. So amoung other things i did, i made sure the contents of dma buffers was of the correct byte order expected by the sound card, but so far that isn't enought (but at least it fixed buffer issues that the first builds of the driver had)

Anyway if you know or are a c programmers with experience with RISC systems wanting to help, you're welcome

Also one of the other guys working on the kx audio driver for OS X, on the intel side, is adding support for midi, i don't think i will port to this driver yet since i am trying to get playback working at the moment.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

So updates, first of all i was able to get the latest kx audio driver working on tiger on intel macs only, here is a sound blaster audigy rx working on my mac pro (with some limitations like no proper sample conversion, and no support for nvram boot args to modify driver settings):

Second i went further in testing on PPC and it looks like the problem is with the sound card not reciving audio from the OS for some reason, in fact was able to test the dma buffers and confirm that they work, so no issues with them as I thought at first, perhaps this is an issue with just the OS X code afterall and not all the code that comes from the windows driver.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Guys i can't believe it! The playback works on the powermacg5 i just got and using Tiger as well! Apparently the problems i was having were caused by some os or kpi related issue. Now i am listening to RAM By Daft Punk very well on my G5!!! Amazing!

For a release version i want to do tests first, but i will let you know when it's ready for release.

 

[r34per]

You're doing some amazing work!! I've wanted to use a sound card on my powermacs for a while now but can never justify the cost of those m-audio ones.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

You're doing some amazing work!! I've wanted to use a sound card on my powermacs for a while now but can never justify the cost of those m-audio ones.

Thank you, btw as i said for now there are some catches, first i managed to get everything to work just on my g5 with os x 10.4.11 server, it's very likely that it will not work on any g4 mac or just with leopard on those, i have to perform tests using os x server on my g4 quick silver beforedrawing any conclusions, but so far it's looking good.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Update, the driver works on my g4 too but apparently it doesn’t work with consumer tiger, for some wired problem of the system it only works only with tiger server, this is valid for g5s too, but it works and now I can happily use my g4 with the audigy 2 zs platinum pro and the external i/o box. So as far as I know it should work with tiger server on a g3 too. I need to test it with a sound blaster live too but I expect it to be working. Also on the g4 192khz is working too but it very cpu intensive, I don’t think it going to work great on a g3, so my recommendation is to not go past 96khz on a slower cpu.

As for tiger server I got the installer from apple’s developers website btw, from this page (developers.apple.con/downloads/more) and you can download it too if you have a developer account, the download is 10.4.7 universal installer, it can be burned to dvd or on a flash drive, and it requires you to set your mac’s date to before the end of 2006 to accept the product key and be activated (you can set that from the terminal in the OS X server installer before you proceed to the installation by using this command: date -u 1201223006) and you can find the product key and the activation details in the release notes file for OS X 10.4.5 which is available on the same page. This doesn’t require you to disconnect the Mac from the network btw, also you can set back the correct date after you activated and configured the os installation.

I will release a first build of the driver when I am done testing with more cards.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

So guys after some testing here is the first public experimental release of the PPC driver port, you can find the release notes on the GitHub releases page (read them please, they are very important info you have to know before trying the driver out).

About the release it has it's limitations and requires OS X Tiger Server to work, but it has been tested to work with the vast majority of the cards compatible with the kx audio driver and should work with G3, G4 and G5 computers (for more info check the release notes on GitHub please!).

You can find it here: https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/kx-audio-driver/releases/tag/PPC_1.0

Hope you like it and might find it useful, it has been a very long and time consuming project for me so star the project on GitHub and follow me on my socials.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Update: new testing showed that the current driver i have released also works on os x leopard, so i am validating it for leopard too.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Reminder: if you didn't try it, the driver has been released here:

Release OS X PowerPC Experimental Release 1.0 · ITzTravelInTime/kx-audio-driver

Change log (from the current x86-only source tree): A series of improvements and changes to let driver work on PowerPc and be usable with older Xcode releases. New sample conversion code for bette...

github.com

Read the relase notes please!

I need feedback from other people about the driver because i cantest it only on my 2 ppc macs, i don't know how it works on g3 macs for instance, so any feedback from people who try the driver out is appreciated.

 

[adam25255]

So guys after some testing here is the first public experimental release of the PPC driver port, you can find the release notes on the GitHub releases page (read them please, they are very important info you have to know before trying the driver out).

About the release it has it's limitations and requires OS X Tiger Server to work, but it has been tested to work with the vast majority of the cards compatible with the kx audio driver and should work with G3, G4 and G5 computers (for more info check the release notes on GitHub please!).

You can find it here: https://github.com/ITzTravelInTime/kx-audio-driver/releases/tag/PPC_1.0

Hope you like it and might find it useful, it has been a very long and time consuming project for me so star the project on GitHub and follow me on my socials.

Great! Got to try it soon.

 

[adam25255]

Works in 10.5.8,(when selected in VLC) absolutely no luck in 10.4.11(consumer, second picture) absolutely no recognition.

My device in signature.Card: Sound Blaster Live! Value.

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Works in 10.5.8,(when selected in VLC) absolutely no luck in 10.4.11(consumer, second picture) absolutely no recognition.

My device in signature.Card: Sound Blaster Live! Value.

Yes, this is a known thing, as i said there is an issuw with consumer tiger, for some reason the os refuses to load the driver and that happens with all custom os x audio drivers i tried, even for other cards, so i have to figure that out in some way, it seems to happen on intel macs too.

What about sound and sound quality? There could be problem with some clicks and distortion, but those aree less lilkely to be problems on a sb live card since they aree 16 bit cards (and so uses different code for some stuff compared to the 24 bit ones).

 

[adam25255]

Sound was OK for me, works just like in Linux.

Does recording work?

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Does recording work?

For now recording doesn’t work, it needs some better sample conversion routines compared to what I have now and it requires the kx ac97 app which I am still trying to port to PowerPC, and even if it worked it was a hacked together feature that had issues on intel, and worked reliably only with the 48khz sample rate, so at best I expect it to be like that on PowerPC too

 

[ITzTravelInTime]

Guys there are some output issues with the current ppc experimental release I managed to fix, so a follow up to that will come soon.

 

[r34per]

I've been using the driver on my sawtooth g4 running leopard with a sound blaster audigy 2 zs and it's been working pretty good! any news on the output issue?