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very interesting stuff, except they fail to mention any point where they actually inject that audio into the computer! That's the sticky point. As a 'multichannel digital snake', cat5 is great! It's cheap and easy to work with.

If we could find a way to write ASIO drivers for an ethernet card, THEN we've got something :)
 
maybe this is the wrong group for people with such skills (I mean that in a nice way). Most of the guys here are hardware folks.

Any ideas where we can brainwash people into bringing their software skills here?

Cheers

R
 
[quote author="Rochey"]maybe this is the wrong group for people with such skills (I mean that in a nice way). Most of the guys here are hardware folks.

Any ideas where we can brainwash people into bringing their software skills here?[/quote]
I actually spend a lot of my time writing software. But writing software and writing device drivers are two different things...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
[quote author="Rochey"]maybe this is the wrong group for people with such skills (I mean that in a nice way). Most of the guys here are hardware folks.

Any ideas where we can brainwash people into bringing their software skills here?

Cheers

R[/quote]

You might try posting in other pro audio tech forums and newsgroups, heck who knows try posting in a software forum, there are audio geeks like us everywhere.

Another thought I have had is maybe try a simpler design first. This appears (though I havent done an extensive search) to be a knew idea for this DIY group (dig i/o that is). I only say that because speaking for me, time is a challenge and commiting to something like this can require alot. Extra time for DIY for me comes sporadically non consistently. But maybe not, some might be able to accomplish things like this more easily than myself. But I admit it's quite exciting. I am up late again reading old design notes from my more digital days.

I have been toying with the idea of DIY digitally controlled analog circuits for audio. Not sure what application yet but it's fun to play and I'm thinking of some designs to get my digital feet wet again.


Anyway just some thoughts

Brian
 
this is why i was scratching my head about a 4in 48KHz 118dB ADC for outside recording use.

Personally, I do some recording in chapel etc. (I do it because there are only 15 people left at the family chapel, and most of them are over 75... It's always nice to have a recording of people in 20 years time etc)

4 high quality inputs would be really nice to have. I think it's very doable. I can do most of the monitoring I need from the shitty ac97 codec that's in the laptop.

Once i'm home, I can then dump the recording into home setup and mix properly.

TI has the TAS1020B, which allows 2x i2s streams at 48KHz down a USB1.1 system. I believe generic drivers are already available for it.
We could hook one directly to a PCM4204 (4ch 118dB ADC) as well as some DIT4096 Spdif transmitters.

Voila... a 4ch ADC with SPDIF out's and USB.

Does that seem like a better place to start?
 
Does TI have developement boards available for these? Are they affordable? If so then a proto might be pretty straight forward. Then we would need someone good with smd layout. And ofcourse the software hurdle.

I know the crystal AD developement boards used to be priced reasonably but I came across a post recently where it was said they raised their prices significantly.

Brian
 
TAS1020B EVM's are difficult to get hold of (think rocking horse sh*t)

PCM4204 evm's are available at $200 a pop.

I may be able to get schematics and software for both though.

Still interested?
 
Well.... I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of money in developement costs for DIY a project for something I already have a device to do. I _would_ spend time though (time doing something fun is cheap AFAIK) so on that note I'll read the data sheets of these devices and see how much additional design work would be required maybe its 123 maybe not, maybe it's out of my league..... Doing corporate SR work the next few days which should leave time to explore these ideas.

Brian
 
i think mcs is investigating the PCM4204 for another project. If his layout is good, maybe we can... ermmm... borrow it? :razz:

that leaves us with the tas1020B --

with some more support (show of interest) i will investigate this in more detail.

cheers

R
 
[quote author="Rochey"]Once i'm home, I can then dump the recording into home setup and mix properly.[/quote]
So why do this on a computer at all? I should have a simple 4-channel recorder (using the TI ADC) ready soon...

TI has the TAS1020B, which allows 2x i2s streams at 48KHz down a USB1.1 system. I believe generic drivers are already available for it.
We could hook one directly to a PCM4204 (4ch 118dB ADC) as well as some DIT4096 Spdif transmitters.

Voila... a 4ch ADC with SPDIF out's and USB.

Does that seem like a better place to start?
It doesn't sound too hard - I haven't looked at the TAS1020B yet though. That will have to wait till later today...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
[quote author="mcs"]So why do this on a computer at all? I should have a simple 4-channel recorder (using the TI ADC) ready soon...[/quote]

Sawweeeeeeeeeeet - although i'd still like a PC version - so I can simply edit some of the stuff if I need to.


[quote author="mcs"]It doesn't sound too hard - I haven't looked at the TAS1020B yet though. That will have to wait till later today...[/quote]

From what i can see, once it's set up, it's a nice little device capable of 4 channels of 48KHz audio. Documentation is near zero for it though. I'll have a word with the product group to see what I can find.

Cheers

R
 
Hi everyone,

I'm pretty new here and I have just found this thread concerning
the implementation of a DIY audio-interface.

I really like the idea of using a dedicated ethernet-port for the
following reasons:

a.) low-cost, high-performance (gigabit-ethernet now on all new
mainboards)
b.) low-level-drivers readily available for all os (win32, linux, mac)
c.) long cabling possible, can be used to "cross-connect" pcs running
as clusters for daw applications.

I'm not that much of a hardware-guy, but I have already written
quite a few kernel-mode-device drivers for Windows (also including
stuff based on the windows TDI and NDIS layer for low-latency
VoIP-applications) and I have already written a generic ASIO-driver
for WDM-soundcards (www.asio2ks.de).

I have done some software-prototyping for a windows P1639
midi over ethernet driver, which would fit perfectly for your
project, so one could also include a midi-interface in the
design.

Concerning the latency, I think that we can achieve really low
latency by not using IP at all, but using the raw-ethernet
frames. In linux this can even be done from user-mode, in
windows only in kernel-mode using an NDIS-protocol-driver.

Doing this we should be able achieve about the same latency you
could get on an firewire link.

What do you think?

Tobias
 
I love you! :grin:

So - that means an ASIO driver could be written for an Ethernet card that would interface into Windows?

I have a few questions if this is true:

1) Would this work with any network interface (i.e. a generic network card in PC) including 100Mbit Ethernet devices as well as 1 Gigabit
2) Would a generic Hub be able to connect many together (or are they strictly IP address driven)
3) Would converter unit need a FPGA to do the Ethernet conversion, or a generic processor. Would the processor/FPGA need an Ethernet Logic Layer as well as the Phy?
4) Do you know of any groups that could contribute to this (because so far, you're the only one who's come forward with such knowledge... and I don't expect you to do all the work :grin:


Cheers for posting - this looks like it has some serious potential now!

Woohoo!

R
 
Hi Tobias,

Welcome to "The Lab"...!

We definitely need your angle on diy'ing here...!

Man - if anything like decent audio-over-network could be discussed in detail and tried out here, that could probably change the industry...!

:thumb:


Jakob E.
 
I think you can use 10baseT, 100baseT whatever speed of ether you need.

If you use Gigabit ethernet - you could use fibre channel which would cover long distances very easily - throughput would be huge. Perhaps this is what MADI is based on - FibreEthernet within proprietory format? It seems the only way to get large channel counts down fibre?

Rochey - you should check out BSS Soundweb - it uses the ethernet interface to transport 24-bit audio with ease. Systems controlled by a laptop, its really flexible and used loads in live PA stuff here.

I really like the idea of using ethernet at the lower protocol levels. However if you could manage to get low latency using IP frames you could create complex patching arrangements so simply by sub-net masking etc - loads of flexibility.

I wish I knew more to contribute.

Good luck with it all

Cheers Tom
 
[quote author="to-pse"]What do you think?[/quote]
Thanks! It's nice to have some of the stuff I have been saying confirmed by someone who actually has experience! :grin:

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
For those of you who wants to dig into the project you might find these info useful.........


An introduction to digital audio

Table of Contents

Preface
Ch. 1. Introducing digital audio
Ch. 2. Conversion
Ch. 3. Some essential principles
Ch. 4. Digital coding principles
Ch. 5. Digital audio interfaces
Ch. 6. Digital audio tape recorders
Ch. 7. Magnetic disk drives
Ch. 8. Digital audio editing
Ch. 9. Optical disks in digital audio
Glossary
Index

An Introduction to Digital Audio.part1.rar

An Introduction to Digital Audio.part2.rar

An Introduction to Digital Audio.part3.rar

Also,


Using The Low Cost, High Performance ADSP-21065L Digital
Signal Processor For Digital Audio Applications


TABLE OF CONTENTS
0. INTRODUCTION................................4
1. SELECTING AN AUDIO SIGNAL PROCESSOR.....................5
1.1 GENERAL PURPOSE DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSORS AND DECODERS FOR AUDIO ......................5
1.2 PRICE ....................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
1.3 PROCESSOR SPEED ..........................5
1.4 ON-CHIP MEMORY..........................7
1.5 I/O CAPABILITIES AND INTERFACES FOR PROCESSING OF AUDIO SAMPLES ..........................7
1.5.1 DMA (Direct Memory Access) Controllers.........................7
1.5.2 Serial Interface to Audio Converters and other Digital Audio Devices........7
1.6 DSP NUMERIC DATA FORMATS : FIXED/FLOATING POINT ARITHMETIC............9
1.6.1 1.6.0 16/24/32-Bit Fixed-Point Arithmetic ..................10
1.6.2 Floating-Point Arithmetic ......10
1.7 DOUBLE-PRECISION FIXED POINT ARITHMETIC VERSUS SINGLE-PRECISION ARITHMETIC.......11
1.8 THE IMPORTANCE OF DYNAMIC RANGE IN DSP-AUDIO PROCESSING ....11
2. USEFUL DSP HARDWARE/SOFTWARE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR AUDIO.............18
2.1 BASIC ARITHMETIC OPERATIONS 18
2.2 IMPLEMENTING CONVOLUTION WITH ZERO-OVERHEAD LOOPING, MULTIPLY/ACCUMULATE INSTRUCTIONS
(MAC), AND DUAL MEMORY FETCHES ........18
2.3 HARDWARE CIRCULAR BUFFERING FOR EFFICIENT STORAGE/RETRIEVAL OF AUDIO SAMPLES ........19
2.4 ZERO-OVERHEAD LOOPING..........20
2.5 BLOCK PROCESSING VS. SAMPLE PROCESSING ...........20
2.6 DELAY-LINES.................................20
2.7 SIGNAL GENERATION WITH LOOK-UP TABLES ...............21
3. IMPLEMENTING DSP AUDIO ALGORITHMS.............23
3.1 BASIC AUDIO SIGNAL MANIPULATION .............23
3.1.1 Volume Control.........24
3.1.2 Mixing Multiple Audio Signal Channels.......24
3.1.3 Amplitude Panning of Signals to a Left or Right Stereo Field......25
3.2 FILTERING TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS............29
3.2.1 The FIR Filter ........................29
3.2.2 The IIR Filter .........................30
3.2.3 Parametric Filters...................31
3.2.4 Graphic Equalizers .................33
3.2.5 Comb Filters ...........................35
3.2.6 Scaling to Prevent Overflow...36
3.3 TIME-DELAY DIGITAL AUDIO EFFECTS......................37
3.3.1 Digital Delay - (Echo, Single Delay, Multi-tap Delays and ADT) .......37
3.3.2 Delay Modulation Effects.......44
3.3.2.1 Flanger Effect .................................... 45
3.3.2.2 Chorus Effect ..................................... 48
3.3.2.3 Vibrato................................................ 54
3.3.2.4 Pitch Shifter ....................................... 54
3.3.2.5 Detune Effect...................................... 55
3.3.3 Digital Reverberation Algorithms for Simulation of Large Acoustic Spaces.........55
3.4 AMPLITUDE-BASED AUDIO EFFECTS.........61
3.4.1 Tremolo - Digital Stereo Panning Effect...................61
3.4.2 Signal Level Measurement.....62
3.4.3 Dynamics Processing..............63
3.4.3.1 Compressors and Limiters ................ 63
3.4.3.2 Noise Gate/Downward Expander ..... 66
3.4.3.3 Expanders........................................... 67
3.5 SOUND SYNTHESIS TECHNIQUES...67
3.5.1 Additive Synthesis ...................67
3.5.2 FM Synthesis ..........................68
3.5.3 Wavetable Synthesis ...............68
3.5.4 Sample Playback ....................68
3.5.5 Subtractive Synthesis..............69

4. CONCLUSION...................................69

Digital Audio Applications PDF


ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!

and see you in about another few years time...................

:grin:

Got some more ebooks on PCI and Computer Engineering when you are ready.

:guinness:
 
[quote author="Rochey"]I love you! :grin:

So - that means an ASIO driver could be written for an Ethernet card that would interface into Windows?

I have a few questions if this is true:

1) Would this work with any network interface (i.e. a generic network card in PC) including 100Mbit Ethernet devices as well as 1 Gigabit
2) Would a generic Hub be able to connect many together (or are they strictly IP address driven)
3) Would converter unit need a FPGA to do the Ethernet conversion, or a generic processor. Would the processor/FPGA need an Ethernet Logic Layer as well as the Phy?
4) Do you know of any groups that could contribute to this (because so far, you're the only one who's come forward with such knowledge... and I don't expect you to do all the work :grin:
[/quote]

Seriously I would not write an ASIO-driver, but write a WDM-compliant
audio-driver. With this, you could use all kinds of applications - stuff
using normal waveout apis, directx and using the ASIO2KS wrapper also ASIO-applications.

1.)
Any network-card with an NDIS-compliant driver would be usable. Even Wireless LAN cards.

2.)
A normal hub has no knowledge of IP or TCP/UDP (if it's not a layer-3
switch). It just uses the mac-addresses of the raw ethernet frames to forward the data to the correct ports.

3.)
I really don't know as I'm not that much of a hardware-guy.

4.)
A co-worker of mine who is more of a linux-guy said that he'd
be interested in such a thing, but obviously we would need more
people to get in the boat - the problem is that you need a
visual-studio compiler and the MS-DDK to be able to develop
WDM-drivers...

Tobias
 
[quote author="gyraf"]Hi Tobias,

Welcome to "The Lab"...!

We definitely need your angle on diy'ing here...!

Man - if anything like decent audio-over-network could be discussed in detail and tried out here, that could probably change the industry...!
[/quote]

Thanks. In fact, there seem to be some solutions based on ethernet
already. I have heard of a company called Gibson (I think they
build guitars - as I'm more of a synth guy I really don't know that well ;-)
who is doing audio over Ethernet (MaGIC) and there is a french company
called Digigram which is doing something that is called "EtherSound".
I guess there's probably some more...

Tobias
 

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