Dieter wrote:
How do you feel about Ethernet
Badly. There isn't much point to it. You want a few I2S links and
probably an I2C bus for control stuff from the digital card to the
analog box. Over ethernet, you have to have actually parse this out
again, also inside the analog box, meaning you need computing power
there as well.
I would furthermore worry about latency with ethernet, if the music
production market would be a goal.
and Firewire?
Badly. Linux supports no firewire cards at all...
USB was designed for very slow things like keyboards and it shows.
Well, USB2 wasn't, but yes, as said I also don't like USB. The custom
cable would as far as I am concerned by best by far. Someone earlier
said "M-Audio Delta 1010" and that looks about right:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta1010-main.html
with respect to the setup, that is. I myself am not so much interested
in inputs (and really only in stereo out, but anything below 5.1 out is
ofcourse pathetic these days).
The "external" box could be a 5.25" bay-box, assuming it could be EMI
insulated well enough.
I like the 5.25" box idea. Gives the end-user the option of internal or
external. Does anyone sell a off the shelf 5.25" aluminum box with EMI
gaskets?
I very much doubt it. Personally I prefer an actual external box, that I
can just place on my desk, with the cable running to the computer that
sits below the desk.
Also, a real external box could have many of its connector on the back,
much like a regular audio device. Ie, it would have analog cinch outputs
and inputs on the back, digital outputs and inputs on the front. Don't
know if both coaxial and optical are still necesary -- I tend to see
only optical these days. If it is, you'd put in some I2C controlled I/O
expander that would be used for switching between them.
A headphone jack on front (nothing expensive, a simple opamp as found in
CD players for example will do just fine -- just advertise it as a
"monitoring device"), two DIN-5 in and out MIDI jacks on the front...
Don't shoot me, but one thing I am very fond of (and which I have at the
moment) is an integrated radio tuner. You can get an I2C controlled FM
tuner from for example Philips quite cheap (they are used in car radios)
so you'd stick a cable input on the back, and route the analog output
from the tuner to an output on the box directly, and to an input so you
could capture it as well.
Ofcourse, if you have a radio tuner, it should then be an R(B)DS capable
one. Normally, you read RDS through the I2C bus on which the tuner sits,
so the data would then find its way back to the computer easily enough.
For added gadget-value though, you'd stick an LCD display on teh front
of the box as well, which would display the RDS data same as a car radio
does (then, you'd have to stick a microcontroller inside the analog box
again though, and _also_ getting it back to the computer over teh I2C
link might be a problem. not sure).
Just thinking out loud...
As to the digital end -- one very nice feature would be hardware
downmixing. So that even if I only have a pair of headphones connected,
I can just point my software DVD player to the 5.1 device, and have it
mixed down in hardware. I'm not sure though if there's many choices to
be made with downmixing. If there are, it could be better in sotware,
but it's certainly the nicest approach.
Rene.
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