Media-OS for Haiku

dcbeckman · 2026-09-02T06:55:42+00:00

What began as a weekend project to modernize my old BeOS apps under Haiku, became a three-month adventure in trying to make my USB MIDI and Audio devices function properly with Haiku. So, you might be wondering, what is Media-OS? It is not an operating system, nor is it a Haiku distro. It is an AI assisted engineering testbed for rapid development of Audio, Midi, and other drivers and apps for Haiku OS. Media-OS currently offers packaged replacements for USB drivers, including UHCI, OHCI, EHCI, and XHCI, as well as multi audio, usb_audio, usb_midi, and midi_server. Version 1.0.3 - First Public Release for Haiku Beta 6 Only (Nightlies will overwrite most modules and make your system unstable - DO NOT INSTALL ON NIGHTLIES!) Adds support for legacy Midiman, Yamaha, and Roland/Edirol midi devices to the usb_midi driver Opens up the usb_audio drivers and multi-audio to support a wide variety of soundcards. Stock Haiku currently limits USB Audio support to USB 1.1 Full-Speed devices that only have one stereo out. Our replacement removes the single stereo out limitation and opens it up to High-Speed USB2 devices, which make up the bulk of prosumer USB Audio devices. UAC1 and UAC2 are supported, and all USB busses are supported, including EHCI. In addition to stability and performance enhancements in Audio and MIDI, there are also changes to the USB stack that could benefit non-Pro Audio users. The biggest being support for Super-Speed USB rates behind USB3 hubs, which currently enumerate as High-Speed devices. Isochronous data communication had changes across all USB drivers, which I hope also proves useful for the various video and cam projects out there. And finally, disconnecting and hot plugging USB MIDI and Audio devices should no longer cause either KDL or system freezes (this may also extend to other USB devices causing issues when plugged in or unplugged). To Install # 64-bit pkgman add-repo https://hpkg.indispensablelabs.com/media-os/x86_64/current # 32-bit (x86_gcc2 hybrid) pkgman add-repo https://hpkg.indispensablelabs.com/media-os/x86_gcc2/current pkgman install mediaos The Future: Audio latency is higher than I would like it to be. Getting about 60ms latency from an audio loopback on a DDJ-SR. Very far from the 20ms that I would find useable for serious performance usage. I will be looking into this further, although it is not my drivers per se, as the USB drivers are on par or even outperform the stock HDA drivers on my system, despite the extra USB cost. MIDI latency is very good, just over a millisecond on most busses, although it creeps up to about 2 ms over EHCI. Firewire Storage Drivers and Firewire Audio/MIDI drivers starting with BeBoB and DICE protocols. SCSI Storage Drivers and native SCSI sample dump support Enhanced Patchbay/Midi Device Manager Native VST implementation Thank you to Andrea for setting me up with my own topic here. You can post bug reports or feature requests to this thread, start a new discussion under the Media-OS topic, or email indispensablelabs@gmail.com. Do not send bug reports for Media-OS replacements to Haiku. It is not their problem. Banners have been added to the syslog so that you can more easily determine that the modules are Media-OS replacements.

dcbeckman

Media-OS is now available for Haiku nightly users in the new 1.0.6 release. Add the Indispensable Labs Media-OS repo and install the 'mediaos' package per the instructions in OP. The install should detect the version of Haiku that you are using and install the appropriate Beta 6 or Nightly versions.

For Beta 6 users that are upgrading, the only change from 1.0.5 should be that it takes you to the new Beta 6 package branch for future updates.
For new Nightly users, the feature set includes the items highlighted in 1.0.3 and 1.0.5 releases (above)

dcbeckman

I just added the packages for the 32-bit x86_gcc2 nightlies, sorry, until now there was only x86_64 support for Media-OS on nightlies.

I also have a teaser package from the next release that I couldn't wait for the full version release. Fixes to CDDA to allow proper CD audio playback. To install it: pkgman install mediaos_cdda

dcbeckman

And for a second preview release from the upcoming 1.0.7 I bring you Firewire storage drivers. So bust out that old LaCie hard drive and fire it up! Tested over both FW400 and FW800.
pkgman refresh
pkgman install mediaos_firewire

Kevin

dcbeckman man you're bringing back some memories. I remember the LaCie drives from back in my video production days

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