Installing an odd soundcard (M-Audio Transit USB)

ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Hi,

years ago I asked here for help about a similar problem, which in the end wasn't a problem at all. But now it is...

I am using Daphile, a Gentoo based audio distribution (a headless music server/player/streamer), running on an old mini-pc (fit-pc2), which has beside the analogue outputs a coax-S/PDIF output. But now I want to connect it to a device which uses ideally optical S/PDIF (analogue output would result in a weird D/A->A/D->D/A chain, since the target device, a hub for some streaming loudspeakers, digitalizes analogue signals to stream them to the speakers). Now the straightforward solution would be buying something which converts either USB or coax-S/PDIF to optical, but that wouldn't be complicated enough, right?

So, I have this old tiny USB-soundcard with optical in- and output, a M-Audio Transit USB. Problem: This thing needs to load a firmware via USB to do something. I had it running years ago successfully on Ubuntu and on a Raspberry Pi, it uses a package called madfuload to load the required firmware. The problem: While I am ok with Debian/Ubuntu, I have no glue about Gentoo. I have root access to the device via ssh.

I found here a Gentoo related bug report (and probably solution?) for this card, but I am not sure how to handle this: https://bugs.gentoo.org/145009
For Ubuntu, the required package is here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MaudioTransitUSB
And here more generic: http://www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/transit.html

Is there anyone who could help me?

Here a very first step: Plugging the card in shows at least up:

Jaglover · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:42 am Post subject:

How about downloading the Ubuntu deb, converting it to tgz, unpacking and executing?
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ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Yes, that's something I had in mind, I just have no idea how to do it. When searching, I find online some converters, which I find a bit odd, but maybe the easiest if there is one which can be trusted? Otherwise I can do it manually (how?), ideally on Ubuntu... I will try as described in https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1676492, let's see how it works.

Jaglover · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 1:45 pm Post subject:

Don't know about Ubuntu, in Gentoo we use app-arch/deb2targz.
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Leonardo.b · Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2020 Posts: 308

Another option, you can use ar to unpack a .deb directly.

http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/deb/#gsc.tab=0

ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Thanks everyone, I'll try this (later when I am back at home). My first approach would be downloading the the deb (done), and using alien on Ubuntu to convert to tgz. Once I have this, I send it to the other computer which runs daphile. How to go on from there? Where to place it? Unpacking should be straightforward, anything I should do special when executing (just calling the files, or using a certain tool to call them?).

I guess deb2targz and alien would be similar? I try it in case I run with alien into some problems, good to know. And ar would allow me to install the deb directly on Gentoo? If this works, it might be the easiest way.

Alright, I have some stuff to try out!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:49 pm Post subject:

ant!,

Once you have the tgz, you can unpack it and look at the pieces.
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ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Here the content of the tgz (converted using alien on Ubuntu from the deb):

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 7:41 pm Post subject:

ant!,

That list is a pile of binaries. They just need to be copied into the right places

The

ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Which means I need to copy the files listed as lib to lib, usr/share to that one, etc? Is this correct?
Do I need to copy all files, or only bin, lib, rules? Or everything beside the doc folder?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 8:21 pm Post subject:

ant!,

That's correct.

Before you start, run

ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Thanks for your help!

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 8:41 pm Post subject:

ant!,

That looks promising.
The *.bin files are the firmware. You needed al least one of those.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

pa4wdh · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 883

I found some pointers which may be useful:
The source of the "madfuload" tool is actually available, i found it in the debian archive: https://sources.debian.org/src/madfuload/1.2-4.2/
That suits the gentoo way of working a bit better, you might actually be able to make an ebuild for it.

On the other hand, i found this page: http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/
Your Transit is listed as using "DFU technology", dfu-util is available as app-mobilephone/dfu-util in portage so that might work.
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Leonardo.b · Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2020 Posts: 308

ant! · n00b Joined: 17 Sep 2016 Posts: 12

Thanks everyone, this was very helpful. I finally found the time to test the thing I did, the deb to tgz and then copying. I do get both analogue and optical output from this soundcard! Both have still some cracking sounds every few seconds, but I hope I can fix this by using longer audio buffers, I need to try this a bit. I assume this isn't really related to the driver installation, or could it be?

The other installation options are definitely good to know for the future, but I guess they shouldn't make something different since I got it in general running now?

As mentioned above, the card shows up as two sub-entries in aplay, and both analogue and optical work on the first only, I get nothing on the second. Could this second be the inputs only, but why would it show then in aplay?