Amateur Soekris 1021

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I am building this DAC and im having a hard time choosing the USB to I2S adapter and the required power supplies i of course want good performance without complicating the build too much.

after looking at all kinds of XMOS and amanero boards on ebay and DIYNHK from $36 USD for XMOS U208 to 190 USD for amanero, i'm real confused and now im actually thinking of using this LKS product instead of a board and building a power supply:

LKS Amanero Combo384 USB interface I2S RJ45 HDMI Coaxial out DSD512 with Crystek | eBay

any suggestions or light ya'll might want to shed on the issue?
 
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Hi. oh wow i have been reading your blog. lol it is a bit like meeting a celebrity.

thanks for replying. that usb board from DIYNHK is 90 bucks + shipping and then it needs a power supply lets say 40 bucks and then it needs transformer. that would being it real close to 200 bucks for the LKS solution and i can power the LKS USB solution with the 5v ifi ipower that it already have.

the above is my thinking and that is why im asking advice because im not sure if my thinking is correct and if i am considering everything that i should. for one maybe powering it with ipower is not a good idea? for another, would there be potential compatibility issues? for another this is a chinese product that i have not seen in person so i dont know if iu can trust that it is a good implementation.

also i very much want a display that shows the locked signal frequency and that is also included in the lks. the reason i sold my Audio-gd dac was that it did not have display or LED to confirm the incoming signal from the computer.
 
I guess I don't care about the frequency so I'm not worried about the display.

So try the LKS, and see how it sounds. I've never tried it, so can't offer any more advice if that's how you want to go.

I do think its strange that LKS claims to be an Amanero board, but its not the standard Amanero board, and I wasn't aware there were other versions out there. They may have copied the design.

Randy
 
So how are you planning to control the DAC? Many of the USB/I2S converters have a series of pins that indicate the incoming sampling rate. So if you have a controller with a screen that could be indicated. Many of the USB/I2S controllers are bus powered, so they don't need a separate transformer. Bus powered units could have issues if your computer doesn't have clean USB power. I have a Dam1021 and have yet to pick out a USB/I2S, but I am leaning towards a Singxer C-1 unit. A raspberry pi will be my primary source.
 
interesting. I didnt even know that this could be an issue. my thinking was that i will read the pin config from the back of the of the unit and connect them to the corresponding pins on the I2S pins on the dac and hope for the best lol. the LKS supposedly locks to the incoming sinal from the PC and then send it faithfully to the dam with 100% compatibility since i have never heard of I2S interface having incompatibility issues. but im a real noob with this. im not even yer sure that i can config my foobar 2000 correctly.
 

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My guess is that since Amanero made his firmware available for uploading so you can load the latest, his IP was stolen and is in those ebay boards.

I don't know if any of the links posted are actually Amanero boards, but they may well work and act like one.

This is all supposition on my part, but since the boards still sell for $100 on the Amanero site, it doesn't make sense to allow a $37 chinese version.

Randy
 
The cheap (30-40$) "Amanero" boards are knockoffs, their quality is inferior to the original Amanero plus their firmware can not be upgraded. If you do attempt to upgrade (or change) the firmware in one of these boards you will effectively brick it.

The expensive LSK Amanero clone claims to be properly licensed by Amanero so it should have no such problems.
 
...i will read the pin config from the back of the of the unit and connect them to the corresponding pins on the I2S pins on the dac and hope for the best lol.

I doubt if that'll work as I imagine the HDMI and RJ45 i2s outputs on the LKS device will be LVDS of some sort so you would need a LVDS receiver at the DAC end to recover the I2S.

If you go with an Amanero solution do the right/honourable thing and buy a genuine Amanero board from Amanero (or one of their resellers) rather than one of the Chinese rip-offs on ebay.

As an alternative to Amanero you might consider the JL Sounds i2soverUSB board, which includes isolation/reclocking;

I2SoverUSB - I2S over USB Audio
 
one end HDMI another end direct soldered. isnt that how you connet any usb adapter to soekris? i mean the soildering of the correct pins to the right hole lol. the other end being hdmi or rj45 is the same. i already bought the soekris v4 but not the usb yet.
 
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I doubt if that'll work as I imagine the HDMI and RJ45 i2s outputs on the LKS device will be LVDS of some sort so you would need a LVDS receiver at the DAC end to recover the I2S.

If you go with an Amanero solution do the right/honourable thing and buy a genuine Amanero board from Amanero (or one of their resellers) rather than one of the Chinese rip-offs on ebay.

As an alternative to Amanero you might consider the JL Sounds i2soverUSB board, which includes isolation/reclocking;

I2SoverUSB - I2S over USB Audio

i do like to do thge right/honorable thing by a manufacturer who produces fine audio product i always try to support them but i dont like powered by usb i do like a separate very high quality and extremely low ripple power supply since i have seen clean power have positive effect in both digital and analoge signals.
 
i do like to do thge right/honorable thing by a manufacturer who produces fine audio product i always try to support them but i dont like powered by usb i do like a separate very high quality and extremely low ripple power supply since i have seen clean power have positive effect in both digital and analoge signals.

You can run Amanero off a separate high quality power supply if you want. The JL Sounds board I linked to also allows separate high quality external power supplies.

Regarding the i2s connection of the LKS to your Soekris DAC, the instances of RJ45/HDMI connections I've come across have all been LVDS (low voltage diffeential signalling) implementations designed to transmit the i2s data over a longer distance. If the LKS is using LVDS you'll need a matching receiver at the DAC end, if it isn't I wouldn't touch it as it's a surefire way of degrading your i2s data - the max recommended transmission distance for i2s is 10cms!
 
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