On Tue, 3 Apr 2018, Chris Chronopoulos wrote:
i'm aware of ADAT, but the motivator here is cost/scalability. most ADAT interfaces are optimized for input with preamps, etc. plus it's limited to 8 channels per link, so there's recurring overhead if you want to scale higher. imagine trying to do high channel count (e.g. spatial audio) on a budget. i'm not aware of any configuration that will get you >16 channels analog for <$1k.
So $100 for a box that gives audio out you can't use as is and you can't split without opening the box and hoping that there is a way to get at the digital part of things before they get to the DAC. Then a small fast computer or custom hardware to split this into 16 channels followed by 8 stereo DACs for less than $1k. You are only making one or a few, so your time designing the thing is signifcant, as is the time to design the software to mangle the audio signal going to the device to hold 8 channels in one. Then you have the time required to modify the original box as well as add your mod to it. If you can assume less than $400 for parts, that only leaves you with less than 20 hours to design, test and execute at $25 an hour... which is pretty poor pay for engineering work.
If there was nothing available, that would be ok, I guess. However, I think with what is available, the job could be done for less when hours is included (and I am not at all sure that $400 of parts is realistic at one off prices)
Of course the other question is, what digital monkeying is happening inside the chips they use. That is, is the digital part transparent?
-- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
