Monthly Archives: May 2011

Travel to ASoC and LAC

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I’ve been a little busy lately with new assignments and travel. I just returned from two back-to-back conferences, in two different countries, in less than one week.

The first was the ASoC and Embedded Linux Audio Conference in Edinburgh. This was a gathering of about 30-40 multimedia developers from all over the world representing almost every company involved in this space and I was honored to be invited. After introductions, the 2 days worth of in-depth technical discussions got started with a description of the ASoC DSP support, focused on the description and charts shown here -> http://omapedia.org/wiki/Audio_Drive_Arch   We then shifted to OS integration topics that mainly centered around Android’s need for a different ALSA user space lib, with more business favorable license terms. Several options were discussed. The UCM talk was next and with an initial brief overview and then enumerating the needs moving forward, including PulseAudio work. Next were discussions on QoS, run-time coefficients, firmware and events. The meeting drew to a close with a summary, questions time and assignments review. I drew the assignment for looking into getting an install script and  git set up for the UCM profile config files, something we will need for Linaro.  All in all, a great technical conference that was well prepared and useful. Also, it was a fantastic opportunity to meet everyone I have been interacting with in email and IRC, plus many new contacts. I look forward to attending the next one!

The second was the Linux Audio Conference in Dublin, aka, LAC2011. I worked with the planners of this conference to get the PulseAudio folks, including Lennart Poettering,  a place to work. The space we were allocated was large enough to allow others to come and listen and ask a few questions. I want to apologize to the people that waited so patiently to ask questions.  We had such an active discussion between the developers that they could hardly get a word in edge wise. I learned a lot and hopefully contributed to the overall discussion, direction and schedule. The rest of the conference was more general purpose for all things Linux Audio including: sound generation, sequencing, pro audio, and composition. I have followed this for many years now and it was really interesting to see how it continues to evolve. Even though it was a Linux conference, there were constant references to Apple and iPad integration with the applications used, even a session on running PulseAudio on Mac OS X. I think that mobile Linux has an opportunity to reach these folks.

Even though the trip was jam-packed, it was a perfect technical requirements review for going into the next development cycle for Linaro.  They were both worth the hectic travel schedule.