Using the RME MADIface on Linux

If you want to use the RME MADIface on Linux, it probably doesn’t work right away.

The latest version of ALSA (1.0.24) – which is probably already installed on your computer – is from January 2011. However, there was a lot of activity and bug-fixing going on since February. So you won’t have all the good stuff and a few things won’t work at all.

Especially, we couldn’t use the sound card in slave mode, and even in master mode a few sample rates just didn’t work. And, what’s really sad, the hdspmixer didn’t work.

But fear not, there is still hope!

That’s what we did:

Download the newest and freshest alsa-driver package from here: http://www.alsa-project.org/snapshot/.

Extract the package somewhere, and compile the thing:

tar xvjf /path/to/alsa-driver-1.0.24.88.gb41c8.1877.ga1e0a.tar.bz2
cd alsa-driver-1.0.24.88.gb41c8.1877.ga1e0a
./gitcompile

You may need a few development packages from your Debian (or whatever you are using) repository (maybe build-essentials, autoconf, …).

And then, as root, install everything:

make install

And that’s it! After re-booting (or restarting the relevant services if you know what those are …) everything should work. You can set the sync-options with alsamixer and you can also use the hdspmixer.

Of course, all this will be obsolete once the new ALSA version 1.0.25 (or whatever comes after 1.0.24) will be released as Debian (or whatever you are using) package.

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One Response to Using the RME MADIface on Linux

  1. Dave says:

    confirmed that driver is working for sampling rate up to 48 with the slave / autosync clock mode, still not working for the higher clock rate, the channel still won’t “combine” / “cut”, e.g for 96k the channel available should be left to 16, however it sill showing 64 channel.

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