D/A converter schematics

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john12ax7

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I've looked around but haven't found much,  looking for some audio converter schematics to study.

Looking to build some D/As. I would think something like an AES receiver chip with clock recovery, that feeds a dac and then an analog I/V stage.  How does the receiver attenuate the jitter? Do you still need a clean PLL and crystal in this case? I would think you still need a clean reference.

Any schematics or relevant part numbers would be appreciated,  especially for the receiver and clocking part.
 
john12ax7 said:
I've looked around but haven't found much,  looking for some audio converter schematics to study.

Looking to build some D/As. I would think something like an AES receiver chip with clock recovery, that feeds a dac and then an analog I/V stage.  How does the receiver attenuate the jitter? Do you still need a clean PLL and crystal in this case? I would think you still need a clean reference.

Any schematics or relevant part numbers would be appreciated,  especially for the receiver and clocking part.

Hey John,

When I was trying to wrap my head around converter topologies I found looking at manufacturer Evaluation boards to be really helpful.  They are usually fairly lean designs but high performance.

Many of the state of the art converters are using a local oscillator and reclocking the input, the Benchmark DAC 2 and 3 and good examples.

I like this white paper from Ian Dennis at Prism Sound

http://www.prismsound.com/test_measure/support_subs/resource.php?rid=173

And some slides from a presentation he gave that are related

http://www.aes-media.org/sections/uk/Conf2011/Presentation_PDFs/02%20-%20Ian%20Dennis%20-%20Performance%20challenges%20in%20audio%20converter%20design.pdf

 
I really like John Siau from Benchmark too.  Dig into to some of his application notes for ideas and inspiration

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/dac3-introducing-the-new-es9028pro-converter

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/inside-the-dac2-part-2-digital-processing

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/149341191-inside-the-dac2-part-1-analog-processing
 
Another resource for DAC development is NWAVguy's blog

Here's a relevant page but you can search through the blog history for more posts. 

http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/odac-released.html

For those in the know there will be nothing earth shattering here but it's fun reading to gain an insight into some of the design challenges in building a DAC
 
Might I suggest you start with something simple and get some quick success, before aiming for the moon?

I'm incredibly biased (this was my part when I was at TI - I defined it to be a simple, easy to design-in, high performance DAC), but just try doing a schematic and layout for a DIR9001 + PCM5102A setup.

It'll give you 112dB SNR, and support up to 96kHz, but the design is very forgiving and easy to make.
I'd also hook up all the IO pins to an Arduino so that you can reconfigure the part easily.

Cheers

Rochey

 
Off topic but is there a problem using a CD4046BE

http://www.ti.com/general/docs/lit/getliterature.tsp?genericPartNumber=cd4046b&fileType=pdf

in place of an older HCF4046BE??

https://www.datasheets360.com/pdf/-4647636057384631808

The HCF are hard to source and I need a replacement for an old converter....... Just want to make sure...

Thanks!!!

 
JohnRoberts said:
if the specs all line up. just do it...

JR

Thanks! Yeah the main parameters are exact as are many of them but, the phase comparator (sp?)  specs are confusing.... I'll need to sit down with them and section them out where I can better understand the differences. May just be the sheet layout... Was being lazy and hoping someone would have already had some experience with any differences if any.

I know some synth building sites mention some types of 4046 not working well in some circuits but I didn't look into if it was just a manufacturer complaint or related to specs...
 
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