Ecasound USB-MIDI and Audio Interface Support

Ecasound fully supports USB-MIDI and class-compliant audio interfaces out of the box on Linux-based systems by leveraging native ALSA and JACK drivers. Because class-compliant USB audio and MIDI hardware requires no proprietary drivers, Ecasound can directly access these devices for multitrack recording, playback, signal routing, and real-time parameter control without third-party plugins or manual compilation.

Audio Interface Compatibility

Class-compliant USB audio devices operate under the standard Linux kernel module snd-usb-audio. Once connected, the operating system registers the device as an ALSA hardware node.

Ecasound interacts with these interfaces directly through its standard input and output arguments. You can target the interface by specifying the ALSA device directly:

If you are running the JACK Audio Connection Kit, Ecasound communicates with the interface through JACK ports just as easily using -i:jack and -o:jack.

USB-MIDI and Hardware Control Support

Ecasound provides native support for MIDI input through the ALSA sequencer and ALSA raw MIDI subsystems. Class-compliant USB-MIDI controllers automatically register as available MIDI endpoints in Linux, allowing Ecasound to receive MIDI messages immediately.

Ecasound uses MIDI primarily for dynamic control of processing parameters rather than soft-synth playback. Using Ecasound’s controller mapping options (-km), you can assign incoming MIDI Continuous Controller (CC) messages from hardware knobs, faders, or expression pedals to internal effect parameters, volume levels, and panning positions in real time.

For example, to map MIDI CC #1 on channel 1 to control the master volume of a chain, you can specify:

ecasound -a:1 -i:audio.wav -o:alsa -ea:100 -km:1,1,127,1,1

Summary of Requirements

To use your class-compliant USB-MIDI and audio hardware with Ecasound, ensure the following:

  1. Linux Kernel Support: The standard snd-usb-audio module must be active (standard on almost all Linux distributions).
  2. ALSA Utilities: Tools like aplay -l and amidi -l can verify the device card and subdevice numbers to pass to Ecasound.
  3. Correct Permissions: The user account running Ecasound must belong to the audio group to access real-time priority and hardware nodes directly.

As long as the host operating system recognizes the class-compliant device, Ecasound requires no additional setup to utilize both audio streams and MIDI control signals.