A modern C++ application (potentially evolving into a daemon) for interfacing with FireWire (IEEE 1394) audio devices on macOS, providing low-level device discovery, control, and configuration capabilities.
This project implements a FireWire audio device daemon that handles:
- Device discovery and hot-plugging
- AV/C (Audio/Video Control) command interface
- Music and Audio subunit control
- Device Discovery: Automatic detection and monitoring of FireWire audio devices
- Command Interface: Implementation of AV/C command protocol
- Isochronous input/output plugs
- External input/output plugs
- Music subunit plugs
- Audio subunit plugs
- Stream format discovery
- RAII principles
- Smart pointers
- STL containers
- Error handling with
std::expected - Thread-safe operations
- XCode 15 or later
- CMake 3.21 or later
- Modern C++ compiler with C++23 support
- spdlog (v1.13.0) - Modern C++ logging
- Catch2 (v3.5.2) - Testing framework
- IOKit framework
- CoreFoundation framework
I recommend create a XCode project using cmake:
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -G Xcode ..
open FireWireAudioDaemon.xcodeprojThe application is built around several key components:
- Handles device arrival/removal
- Manages device lifecycle
- Provides device enumeration
- High-level device management
- Command routing
- State management
- AV/C command implementation
- Low-level device communication
- Error handling
- Capability discovery
- Format parsing
- Plug configuration
The primary goal is to restore FireWire audio functionality on modern macOS versions by implementing isochronous audio stream handling. Since Apple removed AppleFWAudio.kext from the latest versions of their operating systems, and older devices rely on a specific set of standards, restoring FireWire audio functionality is a feasible task. Currently, I am implementing device handling and planning to add isochronous stream support. I have successfully sent audio to and from a device as a proof of concept, but before advancing further, I need a proper tool to handle device controls effectively.
Contributions are highly encouraged! If you're interested, please submit issues and pull requests to help improve and develop the project further.
This project is licensed under the MIT License.
- Based on Apple's IOKit FireWire Family framework architecture
- Inspired by AVCVideoServices sample code (found in the FireWire SDK)