AK4493 + AK4118 DAC

I'm building a DAC using AK4493 and AK4118 chips. I'm mostly following the datasheets, evaluation manuals and other designs that have been discussed here, but I'm confused about MCLK. This section in the datasheet provides the clock examples, and I would like to use a 24.5760MHz clock provided by AK4118. What happens if the source material is either 44.1kHz or 48kHz but the clock remains fixed?

Screenshot from 2023-11-29 11-27-35.png
 
The MCLK out from the AK4118 should be the recovered clock. Then the clock output of the AK4118 will follow the source material. For 44.1 kHz it should output 22.5792 MHz and for 48 kHz it should output 24.576 MHz. To get this, you must set the AK4118 to output a clock of 512fs.
 
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How you see them comparing 4493 vs es9038q2m?

As for me, 4493 is better for DSD, while for PCM it is hardly to say what is better, they sounds a bit different.

For example how to sync all 3 DACs.. just share mck?

Not only MCLK, but also BCLK and WCLK (for PCM).
And control (I2C/SPI), of course.

P.S. Of course DSD is not relevant for XOm just for multichannel (5.1, 7.1)
 
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May I ask if there is there some reason why you are choosing to use SPDIF and a recovered MCLK? Reason I ask is there is expected to be some jitter penalty in that case. IIRC, especially so if using AK4118.
SPDIF because I'm connecting it to a device that has this output.
About MCLK, given the explanation in the first posts this is pretty much how it should work. The datasheet is pretty vague and I don't fully understand how it works.
I also considered other transciever chips but I thought I'd go with their offering. But I'm open to suggestions since this is my first time in the digital audio world.
 
Okay. Dacs usually tend to work best (lowest jitter) if there are local crystal clocks at the dac. A PLL recovered MCLK is never as good as a local crystal clocking.

There are two well-known solutions, which are ASRC (AKM makes a good one, AK4137), or else a FIFO buffer. The most common and probably lowest cost solution is ASRC.

The ASRC chip goes between the AK4118 and the AK4493. You need at least one crystal clock too. NDK SDA series are pretty good.

Also need a microcontroller to program the the AKM chips at power on.
 
That gets a little too involved for a first project.
There are SPDIF receiver chips with lower jitter than AK4118.

Still, you will need to learn how to program a microcontroller at some point, if you don't already know how. An Arduino is good enough, and easy to program.

If you are interested, I have some links to posts explaining use of Arduino for controlling dacs.
 
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