DSD USB AUDIO 2.0 MULTICHANNEL REFERENCE DESIGN

Technical discussions related to any XMOS development kit or reference design. Eg XK-1A, sliceKIT, etc.
User avatar
Ross
XCore Expert
Posts: 962
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:20 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Post by Ross »

Guho wrote:
Hi Ross,

How is the development going?

8 months have passed since you informed me about the development of the multichannel DSD addon for the xCORE USB sliceKIT (https://www.xmos.com/products/xkits/slicekit).

When will the new "slice" for multichannel DSD be released? I would like to buy this board ASAP.

I'm looking forward to your reply!

Kind regards
Hi, they are real and do exist - I will try and find out what the hold up with the release of the hardware into distribution is. As you know the software has been available for quite a while.


Guho
Junior Member
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2014 10:32 pm

Post by Guho »

That is great news Ross !

I'm looking forward to your next message / the technical specifications of the board/slice and of course the availability.

Thanks in advance.
User avatar
Ross
XCore Expert
Posts: 962
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:20 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Post by Ross »

I told something should be available to purchase in 4-6 weeks.
Mivera
Junior Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2015 8:07 pm

Post by Mivera »

Hi Ross,

We are also interested in the exact same thing. Has this been released yet? It's been 4.5 months since your post saying it will be released in 4-6 weeks. But I can't find any info about it on your website.

Thanks
User avatar
infiniteimprobability
XCore Legend
Posts: 1126
Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 10:08 am
Contact:

Post by infiniteimprobability »

It's all released and available - please check here for proof! - http://www.digikey.co.uk/product-detail ... ND/5052031

Also, with regards to running DSD on this kit, take a look at this info too:

http://www.xcore.com/questions/3052/dsd ... -audio-kit
Mivera
Junior Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2015 8:07 pm

Post by Mivera »

Thank you for the reply.

I have read everything there is about this kit but I'm still not sure if it's capable of DSD 256 or DSD 512 on 8 channels.

I'm also aware that there is more powerful chips available now The Xcore-200.

https://www.xmos.com/support/boards?pro ... 4&secure=1

Since the chip on this board has twice the processing power, wouldn't that be the way to go? We are looking for DSD 256 or better yet 512 over 8+channels. We are using our own DAC's which are capable of DSD 512, so the capabilities of the onboard dac doesn't matter to us.

I also noticed that there is even more powerful 4000mips chips available as well.

http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon/xc ... /xe-series

One of them should surely be capable of DSD 512 over 8+ channels?

I can imagine at some point the bandwidth of USB 2.0 will be the bottleneck. Do you happen to know how many channels of DSD 512 can be supported before either your most powerful chip's processing power max out, or the USB 2.0 maxes out?


Thanks in advance
Last edited by Mivera on Thu Apr 02, 2015 5:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Ross
XCore Expert
Posts: 962
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:20 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Post by Ross »

Mivera wrote:Hi Ross,

We are also interested in the exact same thing. Has this been released yet? It's been 4.5 months since your post saying it will be released in 4-6 weeks. But I can't find any info about it on your website.

Thanks
It's listed here: http://www.xmos.com/products/boards#usb ... ltichannel
User avatar
Ross
XCore Expert
Posts: 962
Joined: Thu Dec 10, 2009 9:20 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Post by Ross »

Mivera wrote:Thank you for the reply.

I have read everything there is about this kit but I'm still not sure if it's capable of DSD 256 or DSD 512 on 8 channels.

I'm also aware that there is more powerful chips available now The Xcore-200.

https://www.xmos.com/support/boards?pro ... 4&secure=1

Since the chip on this board has twice the processing power, wouldn't that be the way to go? We are looking for DSD 256 or better yet 512 over 8+channels. We are using our own DAC's which are capable of DSD 512, so the capabilities of the onboard dac doesn't matter to us.

I also noticed that there is even more powerful 4000mips chips available as well.

http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon/xc ... /xe-series

One of them should surely be capable of DSD 512 over 8+ channels?

I can imagine at some point the bandwidth of USB 2.0 will be the bottleneck. Do you happen to know how many channels of DSD 512 can be supported before either your most powerful chip's processing power max out, or the USB 2.0 maxes out?

I also noticed that the Xcore-200 chips also have Ethernet versions. In situations where the bandwidth would exceed that of USB 2.0, could the Ethernet chips be used?

We are not just looking for a development board, we are looking to create a multichannel USB or ethernet to multichannel DSD 256 or 512 interface. We are not experts on building these boards but we know people who are.

But if one of the development boards are capable of DSD 256 or 512 over 8+ channels we would like to buy one to play with. And we would like the most powerful unit.

Another question I have is with the Ethernet chips, can several of them be linked together on a network and be in perfect sync? If so what will the max capabilities be for channel count and DSD rate?

Our ultimate goal is to have 7 cards each outputting 4 channels of DSD 512 linked together on a perfectly synced network.

Thanks in advance
The DAC on that board (CS4384) is 8 channel but only spec'd to DSD128.

DSD64 over DoP has an equivalent PCM rate of 176.4kHz Multiply that by 8 for DSD512 gives an effective PCM rate of 1411.2kHz.

This means you need to transfer 177 samples per USB microframes per channel. So multiply that by 4 bytes persample then 8 channels gives over 5000 bytes - way over the standard USB packet size of 1024bytes, and even higher than a "high bandwidth endpoint" that can transfer 3 x 1024byte per microframe. Therefore DoP not within spec.

We have a our native DSD implementation that uses half the data-rate, which would fit in a high b/w EP but thats still a massive amount of data..
Mivera
Junior Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2015 8:07 pm

Post by Mivera »

Thanks Ross. I'll take my additional questions to the Q&A area.
Post Reply