Embedded Linux audio training

Understand the complete audio stack in embedded Linux system: hardware components, Linux kernel drivers and subsystem and user-space interfaces and components.

Course details

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Duration: 2 days / 16 hours (on-site) – 4 half days / 16 hours (on-line)
Agenda: on-site, on-line
Training materials: slides
Written language: English
Available oral languages: English and French.

Types of sessions

Dates of public on-line sessions

Type	Dates	Time	Duration	Language	Expected trainer	Cost and registration
Audio with embedded Linux (agenda)	Jan 13, 14, 16, 17, 2025	14:00 – 18:00 (Paris, UTC+1) 08:00 AM – 12:00 PM (New York, UTC-5)	16 h	English	Alexandre Belloni	Discount: 569 EUR^* Regular: 669 EUR^* Register now
Additional sessions at future dates will be announced progressively. We generally announce new sessions when existing ones are either full or already passed.

^*The price is excluding VAT. The online shop charges VAT, except for businesses outside of France if they provide valid company information at registration time. Businesses in France, and individuals registering by themselves must pay VAT.

The discount rate is applicable at the following conditions:

Booking at least 1 month prior to the training session start
Booking and payment made online using credit card
Limit of 6 seats per training session at the discount rate

If you are unable to register through our online shop, do not hesitate to contact us, we will be able to provide a training contract and offer alternative payment methods.

Registration on the online shop remains available until the session starts, subject to seat availability.

Target audience

This course targets engineers who need a detailed level of understanding of audio concepts, audio hardware components used in typical embedded systems and how the audio stack works in Linux.

At the end of this course, you will be familiar with all the elements required to efficiently configure audio hardware at the Linux kernel level and the audio APIs available in Linux user-space.

Objectives

Be able to understand the basics of audio theory: analog vs. digital, sampling theory, audio formats and audio hardware
Be able to understand the architecture of ASoC, the Linux kernel subsystem for audio devices used in embedded systems, the role of the different drivers and the Device Tree representation
Be able to write a Device Tree describing the topology of audio hardware on an embedded Linux system
Be able to use complex audio routing capabilities, audio power management capabilities, and complex audio components such as auxiliary devices or amplifiers
Be able to configuration the ALSA user-space components and ALSA audio widgets
Be able to understand the available user-space APIs for playing and capturing audio, as well as audio servers such as Pulseaudio, Pipewire or Jack, and the GStreamer multimedia pipeline library

See the detailed agenda.

Training materials

The training materials will be made available in July 2023. Bootlin delivered a private session of this course in April 2023 and is polishing the training materials for publication in July 2023.

Demos

The lectures in our course is followed by a practical demonstration, performed on an embedded ARM board, representing about 20% of the whole course time.

Prerequisites

Solid experience with the C programming language: participants must be familiar with the usage of complex data types and structures, pointers, function pointers, and the C pre-processor.
Experience with low-level development in Linux and hardware interfaces: participants should have a minimal understanding of memory management, interaction with common hardware interfaces (registers, interrupts), the interaction between Linux user-space applications and the Linux kernel (system calls). Following Bootlin’s Linux kernel driver development course allows to fulfill this pre-requisite.

Minimal English language level: B1, according to the Common European Framework of References for Languages, for our sessions in English. See the CEFR grid for self-evaluation.

Hardware requirements

For on-line courses:
- Computer with the operating system of your choice, with the Google Chrome or Chromium browser for videoconferencing.
- Webcam and microphone, from an audio headset
- High speed access to the Internet
- Optionally: the hardware accessories needed for the practical labs, if you want to reproduce the practical labs by yourself. Note that this is not mandatory: you can follow the course without those hardware accessories, as the trainer will perform the practical labs as live demonstrations.
For on-site courses:
- Training room
- Video projector
- One recent PC computer for each desk (1 or 2 persons) installed with Linux. See the training agenda for detailed requirements.
- Unfiltered and fast connection to the Internet
- Bootlin provides the hardware accessories for the practical labs for the duration of the course

Customer feedback

The trainer has a very extensive knowledge of the lecture and he explained the questions well.

Training participant, October 2024

It was a useful lecture that gave a comprehensive understanding of everything from the basics of audio to HW, SW, audio structure, and applications.

Training participant, October 2024

Trainer very professional, with deep knowledge.

Training participant, May 2024

Classes were great and went through the entire audio stack from bottom to top.

Training participant, February 2024

Alex and Theo were excellent.

Training participant, September 2023

In 2023, 92.3% of the participants were very satisfied with the course, giving a score equal or higher to 8 as the overall rating for our course, on 10 points
In 2023, 100% of the participants got their training certificate, by having more than 50% of correct answers to our final quiz

By the way, you can also see evaluations from previous sessions. In the same way we are transparent with our training materials, we share all the evaluations that we collect, not only the best ones.