Ultimate USB to I2S interface

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Hi,



No, not tried these? What noise levels do you measure?

With my active supplies I get a few microvolt wideband and < 1uV above a few Hz. Are these batteries better?

Ciao T



Someone did measure them but I can't remember the number, they have a very low output impedance. For $25 (including the charger) you may want to give them a try, its a cheap experiement. They made a huge difference on my hiface with its crappy clocks.
 
Maybe a bit off topic, but did you see the Hiface Evo that is coming out ?

The cynical part of me would say that's what happens when you give a company your ideas for a product. They take your ideas, make/modify the product and give the originator/s of the ideas nothing. :)

Maybe I'm wrong and they were going to make it anyway. Or maybe they are a sensible company who respond to customer needs/demands.

Anyway, no pricing yet. Any guesses? I can't imagine it's going to be less than $300. A bit more than most of us are prepared to pay!
 
Hi,

If the chip/driver bundle is affordable, the rest is easy, and we can make a restart.

The eval board costs 149 Bucks. XMOS says this about the driver:

"USB Audio Class 2.0 is natively supported by Apple OS X version 10.6.3 and above. Support for Windows is provided via XMOS partners, Thesycon and Centrance. The drivers are configurable and provide support for WDM/Direct X and ASIO 2.1."

"The Thesycon Windows driver is available through XMOS as a separate part number which bundles the driver with the XS1-L devices, not requiring any upfront NRE fees, or through Thesycon directly using a customer negotiated payment model. The Centrance Windows driver may be accessed via Centrance directly through a customer negotiated payment model."

"A Thesycon evaluation driver is supplied with the reference design."

The eval driver is not usable for a production system.

The XS-1 chips and most of their supporting capacitors etc. are not really suited to manual soldering, so I suspect that making your own is not really on the cards. This stuff definitly needs reflow soldering assembly for > 90% of parts.

I have worked with the XMOS Eval Board and Thesycon windows driver and at least the software side of the Eval Module and Eval drivers come are a bit ropey. Especially next to the extremely reliable and slick Musiland drivers. So you probably need to customise code and get a custom driver or customise Thesycon's one.

Ciao T
 
still looking for...

a USB to I2S solution for installation in my DAC.
My 2 cents:
1. Asynchronous
2. Onboard, fixed oscillators, with on board mini shunt ps regulation (has to be near the clocks, not running through a bunch of wire to get there)
3. up to 24/192
4. No driver for Mac (or very reliable driver, but should not be necessary)
5. Can run off of the USB bus power with appropriate filtering on board (USB bus power does not seem to hurt the performance of the Ayre QB-9, either in measured jitter spectrum, or sound quality)-paranoids can always hack into the USB jack to provide a different supply, or provide pads with jumpers on the board for external supplies.
6. No SPDIF, no external clock input (good onboard XOs with good supplies negate any possible external clock advantage)
There is no real point in doing this as SPDIF out, as there are already very good commercial solutions for achieving this.
Personally, I would be willing to pay up to $200.00 for a properly implemented board (designed by someone who understands high speed/RF design) that I could stick in my DAC. It just does not seem likely that $50-$75 dollars is going to cover the development costs of such a project.
 
a USB to I2S solution for installation in my DAC.
5. Can run off of the USB bus power with appropriate filtering on board (USB bus power does not seem to hurt the performance of the Ayre QB-9, either in measured jitter spectrum, or sound quality)-paranoids can always hack into the USB jack to provide a different supply, or provide pads with jumpers on the board for external supplies.
.


As I understand it the Ayre has galvanic isolation from the USB input, this is how they get clean I2S and a key to their good measurements, it's not possible to galvanically isolate 192khz USB.
 
Well...

Not sure what they are doing now, but current versions of the QB-9 are now capable up to 24/192, and they are offering the new USB receiver as an upgrade for existing QB-9 owners. This has been made possible by Gordon Rankin's new Streamlength Async USB code and hardware choice.
 
looks like...

a good opportunity here for someone to make this (or a diy manufacturer). I bet their would be a lot of buyers for a board like this, every kit and diy DAC could use one, and competant folks would be installing them in OE DACs as well.
Clearly it can be done...
 
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