DIY Audio Analyzer with AK5397/AK5394A and AK4490

That's pretty distressing. None of the replacements are really on a par. Many tradeoffs for lower noise and wider bandwidth. The HF noise corner is much lower on all the others as well.

If you run AK5578 in mono mode, ie; 8 -> 1, it should be capable of good enough performance, looking at measurements of RME ADI-2 Pro.

Obviously using sample rates above 192k brings more HF noise. Yes HF noise corner is lower but you can get 130dB DR (20k BW) so you win some / loose some.

Otherwise, I guess you better start cooking up a 24 or 32 bit SAR ADC.

T
 
It's kind of a pain to use the AK5578 in mono mode, you'll have to have an input buffer than can actually drive 8 differential ADC inputs without distorting or have the added cost and real-estate of 8 channels worth of input buffers.

Stop being a pussy! :D :D

Driving 4 or 8 channels of 3.6k IP Z is not too hard, especially at the small voltage swings required. The bottom line is, it may be the only decent option after the 5394's run out.

T
 
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This chip has a lot of uC connections. Can it also operate stand-alone?

Which chip are you referring to?
The AK5397 only has a hardware control mode, no SW control. You can of course use a uC to set the control pins, but it also works fine with a pure hardware pin control. That was what I used in the initial design, when I used the AK5397, before I discovered the relatively poor distortion performance.

If only the distortion could be improved! In terms of noise it is a very good part.
 
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It looks like a clone of the TI part (or vice versa). Maybe some patents expired.

Linearity/distortion is good. Noise not so much. I like the small footprint. The noise floor is flat to 100 KHz (like the AK5394A). The output format is not I2S but can be converted. With 8 converters is should be possible to add them with DSP to get better SNR (almost 9 dB??) and maybe some distortion reduction if they are put together optimally.
 
It looks like a clone of the TI part (or vice versa). Maybe some patents expired.

Linearity/distortion is good. Noise not so much. I like the small footprint. The noise floor is flat to 100 KHz (like the AK5394A). The output format is not I2S but can be converted. With 8 converters is should be possible to add them with DSP to get better SNR (almost 9 dB??) and maybe some distortion reduction if they are put together optimally.

Yeah, it would take parallel converters to match the AK5394A in the audio band probably. The LT SAR part is probably still better overall, especially considering it gives you opportunities to look higher.
 
I'm just playing with the LT2500-32, connected to a Beagle Bone Black.
Had lots of problems to make the BBB work with the SPI interface; The CPLD
that creates the sampling clock from 100 MHz then had just enough resources
to make a 32 bit USART + mux , so I now read 4 bytes via the parallel register
interface. The SPI of the BBB would not have supported the full 1 MSPS anyway.

The register interface is taken care of by one of the 2 PRUs, extraneous 32 bit RISCs
with predictable latency and 5 nsec per instruction. They talk to the 1 GHz ARM
processor via shared ram. The ARM runs Debian linux, one can ssh into it and
compile all the programs locally on the ARM with the standard Linux tools.
The interface to the rest of the world is the LAN.

My PC can simply open port 5025 on 192.168.178.111 and write/read GPIB/
IEEE488/SCPI style commands / data. The BBB should be fast enough to run
FFTW locally; I could compile it already. Not bad for a $55 computer.

The LT2500-32 is the small rectangle on the stamp-sized circuit board in the
foreground. There are also 2 LT3042 as local positive regulators, a -3V regulator,
full differential ADC driver (LT6263???) and a LT6655 as reference. The CPLD is a
$2 Xilinx Coolrunner.

Still quite a long way to go, I'm just getting first samples and can setup the ADC.

regards,
Gerhard
 

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Returning to my line-hum-with-unbalanced-cabling issue :)

To recall the problem arises when the cabling is: BNC-out, BNC cable, BNC-to-XLR-adapter at the input.

I have meanwhile added an battery power option with a switch, so that I can switch between line and battery power without the need touch anything in the measuring setup.
Some loopback measurements:

First, the ilustration of the problem, the line powered measurement (red) over the same measurement with battery power (green). Battery powered the line artefacts are gone.
Netz over bat (1,10).jpg

Next the same measurement, both cases battery powered. First (red) the line power connected to the analyser and the transformer is line powered, but not connected to the analyser PCB. Second (green) line power unplugged.
You see, there is no difference. An indication that the transformer stray might not be the problem ... but keep in mind the transformer is driving no load here.
bat netz an over bat netz aus (1,10).jpg

Last I compare line powered balanced (red) to battery powered unbalanced (green) measurement. (I did not alter the generator settings for that the harmonics do not change. Therefore the signal is 6dB stronger in balanced setup.)
Netz Bal over bat unbal (1,10) Pegerl gen unverändert (also bal 6dB höher).jpg

Conclusion: it is possible to get the same performance unbalanced as ballanced, with the not recommended unbalanced cabling topology, at least if you power the analyser from batteries.