mhelin
Well-known member
What happened to this project?
DIY PC audio interface
- Thread starter Rochey
- Start date
Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:
kubi,
knocked the nail on the head. Whilst not out of the realm of a DIY'er... I think this stuff really is out of hte real of DIY'ers with jobs.
I'd rather focus on making easier interfaces that use someone else's hardware to go to the PC. (e.g. an ADAT converter box or a Stereo I/O highquality converter for a pair of green pre's).
Trying to get dedicated hardware to speak with a PC in a physical and software based system is the realm of dedicated people who know what they are doing :green:
knocked the nail on the head. Whilst not out of the realm of a DIY'er... I think this stuff really is out of hte real of DIY'ers with jobs.
I'd rather focus on making easier interfaces that use someone else's hardware to go to the PC. (e.g. an ADAT converter box or a Stereo I/O highquality converter for a pair of green pre's).
Trying to get dedicated hardware to speak with a PC in a physical and software based system is the realm of dedicated people who know what they are doing :green:
blue_luke
Well-known member
This thread is not dead, altough it may smell funny..... ;D
Oh do we (I) realy really really want this!!!
I have done a bit of surveying as to what is available on the net presently. And here is some of my conclusions and musing....
ADAT: will be here for a long time, it is inexpensive, it works ok, is bullet proof ans simple. The broadcasters love it and the hardware makers also.
AES/EBU: will always be there too, simple enough to implement in hardware and many many gizmos have the interface built-in, with software drivers, no need to reinvent the wheel here. Limited to 2 channels but many channels can be encoded, I think it will always be there, and works no problems at high sampling rate.
FIREWIRE: Also a staple of the broadcasters and film post prod. It is a niche but since the advent of the DICE chip, many manufacturers use it. Every time you see something using the ''JETpll'' jitter reduction, it uses a DICE chip. It cuts the design time and effort many folds for the design team.
But it is not flawless and the drivers are still not completely stable. I had lots of headache getting the Presonus firewire studio (last summer), StudioLive 24:4:2 this week. They use DICE chips. Once they run after all these efforts, it's very good! Reminds me of installing a printer in DOS3.2!! I am that old!!
Apple is dropping the standard but many interface cards are available for PC, quite inexpensive and with good performances. I think this one is here to stay also.
Cobranet: going the way of the dodo and latency could become an issue. Mind you, there is quite interesting stuff ready made by these guys: http://www.atterotech.com/.
Sony: as usual, they want to pull the sheet all to themselves and nobody will use it. To bad, seems pretty good
Gibson maGIC that almost no one hears about but looks interesting. I have not contacted them about it. It also dates from 2001 or so (I might be wrong on that) seems 'fresh' to you? we went from T/10 to T/100 and T/1000 in that same period!
There are quite a few other avenues but they all requires licensing and $$$$$ for development kit and with ALL those technologies, you have to sign NDA (non disclosure agreement) seal with your blood and throw the key in the ocean. Then at night you will hear ''the precious is mine! the precious is mine!!)
Currently what we use is the ''Audiorail''. 32X32 using 4 ADAT ins and outs and simple cat5 cable. It is not ethernet compatible, but you can connect pretty much as many drops a you want, each unit becoming a repeater for the next hop. The only problem we found with it is actually involving the DICE chip!! with Presonus stuff (JETpll) where sometimes we would hear a tick sound, indicating a short loss of sync. I devised a way around this, it is not simple but not too expensive and now the system is rock solid!!
The audiorail boxes are about 500$ each, not to bad considering it is 32X32, or about 16$ per channel plus cable cost. but that's for one box, we need between three to five!! (stage/monitors/FOH/ two for the remote truck) and at each end you still need to convert back from adat to PC, we use Maudio lightbridge for that, or back from ADAT to audio, we use sonic cores for that.
This whole thing has become very expensive and complex over the years!! I think we have more than 20K$ invested in just carrying signals over the place)
We also tried firewire over fiber optic.... It works flawlessly but is somewhat limited in usefullness. We connected our rack on stage ( 2X RME fireface800, 2 presonus digimax and some rack preamps for a total of 32X32). The ouputs of the RMEs are taken to a box that converts to fiber optic, then 600feet down we have a box that convert back to FW and bingo! For monitoring we use a EMU1616m with a pcmcia card. The whole rig works with a laptop.
In the context we use our system, this is not completely satisfactory, but it does work good. And also quite expensive!! the two boxes are 600$/pair and the fiberoptic cable (glass) was about 500$ for 600feet.
I also thought of devising a poor man's network using a ADAT lightpipe to twisted pair converter.Since there is 4 pairs in a cat5, using two cable would allow 32X32 channels, but the data rate we need limits the lenght of the cable to about 50 feet.... not usefull enough. It has the beauty of being able to connect up to 32 drops on the line!! (RS485 scheme).
The best and most promising avenue at the moment is Audinate 'Dante' system.
This is truly great!! And I spoke with them and basically I can become a licensee, but I am afraid my pockets are a bit on the empty side for now, and also at my age (59 this year) I am afraid I don't have the ooomph I used to have! Still...... I am really thinking/dreaming/loosing sleep over this!!
For the DIY there is a small Italian firm with a quite interesting product: http://www.zpeng.com/Articles/Products/picoDMmodules.html
Meanwhile, I am still looking....
Luc
Oh do we (I) realy really really want this!!!
I have done a bit of surveying as to what is available on the net presently. And here is some of my conclusions and musing....
ADAT: will be here for a long time, it is inexpensive, it works ok, is bullet proof ans simple. The broadcasters love it and the hardware makers also.
AES/EBU: will always be there too, simple enough to implement in hardware and many many gizmos have the interface built-in, with software drivers, no need to reinvent the wheel here. Limited to 2 channels but many channels can be encoded, I think it will always be there, and works no problems at high sampling rate.
FIREWIRE: Also a staple of the broadcasters and film post prod. It is a niche but since the advent of the DICE chip, many manufacturers use it. Every time you see something using the ''JETpll'' jitter reduction, it uses a DICE chip. It cuts the design time and effort many folds for the design team.
But it is not flawless and the drivers are still not completely stable. I had lots of headache getting the Presonus firewire studio (last summer), StudioLive 24:4:2 this week. They use DICE chips. Once they run after all these efforts, it's very good! Reminds me of installing a printer in DOS3.2!!
I am that old!! Apple is dropping the standard but many interface cards are available for PC, quite inexpensive and with good performances. I think this one is here to stay also.
Cobranet: going the way of the dodo and latency could become an issue. Mind you, there is quite interesting stuff ready made by these guys: http://www.atterotech.com/.
Sony: as usual, they want to pull the sheet all to themselves and nobody will use it. To bad, seems pretty good
Gibson maGIC that almost no one hears about but looks interesting. I have not contacted them about it. It also dates from 2001 or so (I might be wrong on that) seems 'fresh' to you? we went from T/10 to T/100 and T/1000 in that same period!
There are quite a few other avenues but they all requires licensing and $$$$$ for development kit and with ALL those technologies, you have to sign NDA (non disclosure agreement) seal with your blood and throw the key in the ocean. Then at night you will hear ''the precious is mine! the precious is mine!!)
Currently what we use is the ''Audiorail''. 32X32 using 4 ADAT ins and outs and simple cat5 cable. It is not ethernet compatible, but you can connect pretty much as many drops a you want, each unit becoming a repeater for the next hop. The only problem we found with it is actually involving the DICE chip!! with Presonus stuff
(JETpll) where sometimes we would hear a tick sound, indicating a short loss of sync. I devised a way around this, it is not simple but not too expensive and now the system is rock solid!!The audiorail boxes are about 500$ each, not to bad considering it is 32X32, or about 16$ per channel plus cable cost. but that's for one box, we need between three to five!! (stage/monitors/FOH/ two for the remote truck) and at each end you still need to convert back from adat to PC, we use Maudio lightbridge for that, or back from ADAT to audio, we use sonic cores for that.
This whole thing has become very expensive and complex over the years!!
I think we have more than 20K$ invested in just carrying signals over the place)We also tried firewire over fiber optic.... It works flawlessly but is somewhat limited in usefullness. We connected our rack on stage ( 2X RME fireface800, 2 presonus digimax and some rack preamps for a total of 32X32). The ouputs of the RMEs are taken to a box that converts to fiber optic, then 600feet down we have a box that convert back to FW and bingo! For monitoring we use a EMU1616m with a pcmcia card. The whole rig works with a laptop.
In the context we use our system, this is not completely satisfactory, but it does work good. And also quite expensive!! the two boxes are 600$/pair and the fiberoptic cable (glass) was about 500$ for 600feet.
I also thought of devising a poor man's network using a ADAT lightpipe to twisted pair converter.Since there is 4 pairs in a cat5, using two cable would allow 32X32 channels, but the data rate we need limits the lenght of the cable to about 50 feet.... not usefull enough. It has the beauty of being able to connect up to 32 drops on the line!! (RS485 scheme).
The best and most promising avenue at the moment is Audinate 'Dante' system.
This is truly great!! And I spoke with them and basically I can become a licensee, but I am afraid my pockets are a bit on the empty side for now, and also at my age (59 this year) I am afraid I don't have the ooomph I used to have! Still......
I am really thinking/dreaming/loosing sleep over this!!For the DIY there is a small Italian firm with a quite interesting product: http://www.zpeng.com/Articles/Products/picoDMmodules.html
Meanwhile, I am still looking....
Luc
blue_luke
Well-known member
Oh, and I forgot to mention MADI. To me it is a snobish closed club where only RME SSL and AID are granted entrance.
It probably works great, but I don't know much about it and it is VERY expensive!!
Also I forgot to mention a fact that I realized over the years and experience....
In the context of live recording and PA systems, we do need many inputs, 32 is a minimum and 48 is more conmfortable, but we do not need that many returns (output) lines. I consider 8 to be perfect from the FOH to the stacks, 16 if you wish.
What I find missing somewhat would be to have a ''digital party line'' where orders can be tele-prompted over the network, since nowadays there are so many PCs kooked everywhere during a show.
Also usefull would be a low-res video link over the ethernet so the guys in the remote truck-security etc... can see what is going on the stage from the PC. ( I always use 2 screens in my setup)
Thanks aain, Luc
It probably works great, but I don't know much about it and it is VERY expensive!!
Also I forgot to mention a fact that I realized over the years and experience....
In the context of live recording and PA systems, we do need many inputs, 32 is a minimum and 48 is more conmfortable, but we do not need that many returns (output) lines. I consider 8 to be perfect from the FOH to the stacks, 16 if you wish.
What I find missing somewhat would be to have a ''digital party line'' where orders can be tele-prompted over the network, since nowadays there are so many PCs kooked everywhere during a show.
Also usefull would be a low-res video link over the ethernet so the guys in the remote truck-security etc... can see what is going on the stage from the PC. ( I always use 2 screens in my setup)
Thanks aain, Luc
