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Friday, November 3, 2017

ST Audio DSP2000 C-Port on Linux using JACK and wineasio

subtitle:
Make revive the ST Audio DSP2000 C-Post audio board on Linux


I've a DSP2000 C-Post Audio System made by ST Audio (http://www.st-audio.de), I'm using it in my small recording room for instruments and voices, then I usually move to my main workstation to mix in a comfortable environment.
Even if it is a card from the late 90s, it still does a pretty decent job.

This system is build of an external unit and a PCI Card.

See main specs below:
  • 10 x 10 24-bit/96kHz 100% Full-Duplex recording path support
  • 2 x balanced (XLR) inputs with built in pre-amps (-24dB to +50dB) & switchable phantom power (48V)
  • 2 x balanced (XLR) outputs
  • 8 x 1/4" unbalanced inputs
  • 8 x 1/4" unbalanced outputs
  • coaxial and optical & AES/EBU I/O connections as standard
  • stereo headphone output with volume control (1/4" connector)
  • 2 x 16 channel (32 channels) MIDI interface ports provided (2 outputs, 1 input)
  • peak LED for channel 1&2
On this card, all the magic happens in the IC Ensemble Envy24 I/O controller chip, nominally the ICE1712.
The problem with this card it that official drivers just work on Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP, unluckly support for those old O.S. is at the end of life.
But we have an ace up sleeve, it is called Linux.
We can make this card revive, using a brand new, and free also, linux distrubution.
The one I've choose it's Linux Mint 18 (http://www.linuxmint.com/).


As workstation I choose the Reaper Digital Audio Workstation (http://www.reaper.fm/). I'm using this station to record, then i will post mix all on my main workstation, using Reaper of course, this time on Microsoft Windows.
I'm using a Intel Core 2 Duo, 4Gg RAM, 256GbHdd as main hardware cause I do not need a lot of power just to record tracks, of course my mixing workstation is a powerfull i5 machine.

Reaper can works on linux thanks to Wine (http://www.winehq.org/).
The ICE1712 alsa module, which is the linux driver that makes the card works, it is already built in the choosen distribution.
The trick here is to use the WineAsio (https://sourceforge.net/projects/wineasio/) wrapper, to make Reaper works on ASIO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output) through JACK (http://jackaudio.org/).

So, let's dive into my small guide.

Step 1) Install Linux Mint, of course!

Then we have to add install the KxStudio repository (http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/). For my x64 Linux Mint distribution, commands below will works
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https software-properties-common wget
wget https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-debian/+archive/kxstudio/+files/kxstudio-repos_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i kxstudio-repos_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo apt-get install libglibmm-2.4-1v5
wget https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-debian/+archive/kxstudio/+files/kxstudio-repos-gcc5_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i kxstudio-repos-gcc5_9.4.6~kxstudio1_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

VST and wineasio works on x86, so let's set our architecture
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

Now we are going to install jack, realtime mode is preferred, when installation ends make the current user part of the audio group using "Administration / Users and Groups: , then logout and login again on your session
sudo apt-get install jackd jack-tools

Commands below will install wineasio, and also wine-rt that is a dependance on wineasio.
sudo apt-get install wineasio
This command will register wineasio, id successfull it should return something like "Successfully registered DLL wineasio.dll"
regsvr32 wineasio

The mudita24 (https://github.com/NielsMayer/mudita24) mixer and alsa-tools should help configuring our card
sudo apt-get install alsa-tools
sudo apt-get install mudita24


Finally, we can install Cadence from the KxStudio tools to enable the ASIO driver.
sudo apt-get install cadence
Once Cadence is installed we have to set the device binded to the driver to Alsa / hw:DSP24.
Then make autostart JACK daemon, and also it could be usefull to route ALSA and PulseAudio to Jack, simply settings the ALSA Bridge to ALSA->Jack

A reboot is preferred now.

Reaper should now recognise the card using the wineasio driver, all should work fine, at least on my hardware.

This card still rules, and can be used at least to record up to 8 tracks.


Notes
  • read risk disclaimer
  • excuse my bad english
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