Fwupd Gaining Support For Synaptics/Conexant CX Audio Firmware Updating

[starshipeleven]

That’s exactly the point I’m making. Rewriting proprietary blobs and code drops, turning them into modularized, efficient, generic code is very characteristic of community-led open-source software projects.

This is just a case of "integrating a standalone project in a bigger one".

[starshipeleven]

Wait so this means my chip is crap too? It doesn't seem to be the case except for a very faint thermal noise that I somehow can hear.

So, not only the sound fidelity of these chips sucks because it's low-end, but it also adds analog interference, and for you "it does not seem to be bad". You have very low standards I guess.

[tildearrow]

So, not only the sound fidelity of these chips sucks because it's low-end, but it also adds analog interference, and for you "it does not seem to be bad". You have very low standards I guess.

Thanks for the information. Where can I find a good sound card/audio interface?

[starshipeleven]

Thanks for the information. Where can I find a good sound card/audio interface?

Asus Xonar U3 and U7 should be good ones that also work on Linux, on USB interface (which is perfectly adequate for sound, no need to waste a PCIe slot with that).
You usually need a quality headset or over-ear headphones to actually hear the difference.
Nothing gold-plated but some named brand like Sony or Sennheiser in the 30 euro price range, I have a Senheiser HD202, for example. If you use the headphones that came with your smartphone box or "whatever is cheapest", or bullshit brands like Beats it's unlikely you will hear much difference because the headphones themselves are the bottleneck.

As for base audio setup for a static system I have a Logitech Z333, it comes with decent tweeter (the small audio emitter at the top of the two small boxes) and has a subwoofer (the bigger one in the box), which is the bare minimum you need to actually hear the full sound range correctly. It's again not golden ears audio equipment by any means, I got it for 60 euro, years ago.

Also, using quality recordings (high bitrate and/or lossless, or wav files copied straight from CD, or movies in their native language from DVD/Bluray) matters. As again if your media sucks at the source all the hardware you have can't save it.

Note that this is the "bottom floor" audio setup. Aka most people should be able to hear a difference at this point (or actually care). If you don't notice anything significant at this stage, then you won't probably notice much even going in the high end (which is significantly more expensive but still realistic), an you most definitely won't notice the audiophile-grade bs like "directional copper cables" and "cable elevators" to keep the cable from touching the ground and so on.

[tildearrow]

Asus Xonar U3 and U7 should be good ones that also work on Linux, on USB interface (which is perfectly adequate for sound, no need to waste a PCIe slot with that).

Note that I just don't want "sound'. I need low latency.
USB audio interfaces tend to add a small amount of latency...

You usually need a quality headset or over-ear headphones to actually hear the difference.
Nothing gold-plated but some named brand like Sony or Sennheiser in the 30 euro price range, I have a Senheiser HD202, for example. If you use the headphones that came with your smartphone box or "whatever is cheapest", or bullshit brands like Beats it's unlikely you will hear much difference because the headphones themselves are the bottleneck.

I think I do. Does 64 euro count? (this is without import fees and other taxes)
Although, nothing gold-plated? What is so bad about gold?

As for base audio setup for a static system I have a Logitech Z333, it comes with decent tweeter (the small audio emitter at the top of the two small boxes) and has a subwoofer (the bigger one in the box), which is the bare minimum you need to actually hear the full sound range correctly. It's again not golden ears audio equipment by any means, I got it for 60 euro, years ago.

I don't have any of these.

Also, using quality recordings (high bitrate and/or lossless, or wav files copied straight from CD, or movies in their native language from DVD/Bluray) matters. As again if your media sucks at the source all the hardware you have can't save it.

I know that perfectly. I am a frequent user of FLAC.

Note that this is the "bottom floor" audio setup. Aka most people should be able to hear a difference at this point (or actually care). If you don't notice anything significant at this stage, then you won't probably notice much even going in the high end (which is significantly more expensive but still realistic), an you most definitely won't notice the audiophile-grade bs like "directional copper cables" and "cable elevators" to keep the cable from touching the ground and so on.

I have actually used a DJ controller as an audio interface, and indeed, the audio quality was higher, and the thermal hum was absent.

[starshipeleven]

Note that I just don't want "sound'. I need low latency.
USB audio interfaces tend to add a small amount of latency...

IMHO that's less of an USB issue and more of a "crappy device" issue.

I can't tell the difference in latency from a Xonar U7 and the onboard audio, while I sure can tell that the USB Logitech headsets I use at work have awful latency (which isn't terribly relevant for their usecase to be honest).

Theoretically the Xonar U7 supports ASIO protocol which is the "low latency" protocol for sound, but I'm not aware of ASIO protocol on Linux because of patents and licenses.

I can also tell the bluetooth (standard media stream) latency. Yes BT also has a low latency media stream mode but I rarely care about quality for bluetooth devices.

Although, nothing gold-plated? What is so bad about gold?

"Gold-plated" is used as a synonym of overpriced for pure looks.
An example is the gold-plating of many connectors where it's completely irrelevant (like the external shielding), even on optical cables where the metal is just mechanical support.

I have actually used a DJ controller as an audio interface, and indeed, the audio quality was higher, and the thermal hum was absent.

Then the main question is "do you need the quality?". If you are fine with a low(er) end sound setup, it's ok. I'm not telling you how to listen to your music.

I'm just pointing out that Conexant sound chips are the low-end and usually on the crappy side, as far as hardware goes, which is a fact. Any random Xonar PCI or PCIe or USB sound card will outperform them.

[pal666]

No, nobody cares about size and amount of library and runtime dependencies (except maybe Slackware and Gentoo users, but that's on them for choosing a terrible distro). The only metric that matters is amount of unique SLOC needed to achieve a task.

fwupd was written by someone to do same thing, so why not count it's lines? adding support to additional hardware is surely easier than writing firmware updater from scratch? synaptics devs had to write fwupd+their hardware support. they didn't write it generic enough to support other vendors because they were paid only to support their hardware. linux in general wants to support all vendors, that's why fwupd is extensible. but it has nothing to do with opensourceness, it just has different business goal. you can do extensible or monolithic in open or closed source as you'd like

[SystemCrasher]

Open-source software in a nutshell.

Code reuse in a nutshell.

[SystemCrasher]

No, nobody cares about size and amount of library and runtime dependencies (except maybe Slackware and Gentoo users, but that's on them for choosing a terrible distro). The only metric that matters is amount of unique SLOC needed to achieve a task.

I'm not a slackware or gentoo user, but I do care about it. Just because I do not want my systems to turn into bizarre spaghetti monsters full of bugz, vulns and so on. So code reuse is good. But only to certain point. When some fucking moron brings whole google chrome runtime for their hello world crap, for example, it clearly showcases it could and would be goddamn toxic. Electron apps we call this dreadful shit.