[quote author="tmbg"]SSLtech: don't suppose you have a pinout?
A tdif cable actually has 8 separate pieces of coax in it?
An AES/EBU is stereo, correct? So it's 4 AES/EBU lines in each direction?
hmmm....[/quote]
Yes 8 each way, 4 pairs. I never needed to look it up, as you look at the 25-pin, row 1-13 pin 1 is 1/2, (out or in, I forget, but a scope will tell you... the outs will have signal on them, the ins will not!) pin 2 is 3/4, pin 3 is 5/6, pin 4 is 7/8. Pin 10 is 7/8 going the other way, pin 11 is 5/6, pin 12 is 3/4 and pin 13 is 1/2.
The shield for pin 1 is on pin 14, the shield for pin 2 is on pin 15, the shield for pin 3 is on pin 16, the shield for pin 4 is on pin 17.
The shield for pin 10 is on pin 22, the shield for pin 11 is on pin 23, the shield for pin 12 is on pin 24, the shield for pin 13 is on pin 25. Draw this down and you'll see a pattern. A TDIF-to TDIF cable is left-right reversed so that ins connect to outs.
Clock out is on one of the middle pins, along with LRCK out and S.R. flag (S.R. = Sample Rate). There are also S.R. flag in, LRCK in, clock in and a ground or two...
The Audio format is AES/EBU, but unbalanced, 75Ω. I think the clock is stripped out so that it appears only on the clock out pin as a word clock and not in the bitstream, but I'm not certain... you'd have to test it, I've never been that interested that I would spend that much time.
I know that the AE-88 interface might be rather more than just a level shift and balancing interface, so I suspect there are some bitstream modifications.
Keith