Hi! Please help. I need to stream hdmi with Canon M50 through Avio 4k. M50 does not have clean HDMI sound streaming. Just video. If i buy Rode AI-1 - can it link the computer to Rode Filmaker wireless mic, without any delay between sound and video?
@EEVblog2 Pleases go and visit Rode factory! I mean we all have seen PNP machines and Re-flow Ofens but they real interesting cnc machines, and i would love to see the diaphragm tuning process. Show us some of there secret "secret sauce"
Class D amplifier implementation for the headphone jack that could drive a minimum 8 Ohm driver per channel. This block is there in between the voltage multiplier block and Headphone out which could imply that the driver could be drawing its power from voltage multiplier.
You're right. BL is a BCX56 NPN audio driver/output transistor and AL = BCX53 PNP complement. They appear to be configured as an output buffer of an opamp.
I suspect the long trace length for the mic signal is because it's differential until the chip, so it should be more immune to noise than a presumably single-ended line level signal.
Why is there so much freking stuff inside this? You need filtering, pre-amp, ADC, DAC, USB interface and 48v upscaler.. Although their efforts were rewarded with very low noise results
The reason for the end-mount XLR connector is because the main PC board is upside-down. That would put the XLR connector upside down which would be laughable. There are dozens of right-angle. PC-mount XLR connectors but they all assume the board is at the bottom. They could have put the rear connectors on the main board, but it would have made the box bigger and put the USB connector upside-down, also. D10 is likely a set of 4 clamp diodes to prevent phantom power switching transients from blasting the sensitive mic amp input circuit. Very common in transformerless mic preamp circuits with switchable phantom power. Nice looking product, though. Above average for USB sound interfaces.
There are also a couple of right angle ones available that are the other way round, but I guess at the volume they buy these straight connectors possibly for other devices it was just much cheaper than to buy low volumes of relatively rare connectors.
I don't think the name really means anything, its just a combination of the name of one of the founding companies (NeuElektrik AG) and something else. "new trick" would be "neuer trick"and "new technique" would be "neue technik" in German. I just searched for and thought about this for a while but i couldn't find the full explanation.
Btw, USB audio interface chips are difficult and expensive to get. Not to talk about rediculous licenses you have to pay. It's a nightmare for everyone designing audio equipment. Nice to see this one, poorly designed though, far to complicated and weird board design as you mentioned.
The layout is correct, op-amps are near the the microphone input jack to bring up the gain on the input, Usually the op-amps are set up in 20db incriments and selected by the mux for 0db, 20db, 40db , 60db of gain for the input. Usually the in chip variable mic amp in the chip is only capable of 20db which is way to low for a dynamic mic. Not to mention that the entire signal path is balanced up to that chip. The I also would be very surprised if the phantom power is actually 48V if the capacitors are only 50V usually in these USB powered interfaces it is 24V or 36V which works fine, could be wrong. The 4 transistors are used as a power amp for the headphone possibly for the speaker output. And Crystal, you crack me up (old 16 bit ISA/PCI sound card chip for those that do not know).
Wow. Thanks. More than I could ever want to know about this piece of kit. BTW, the LED 2&3 bits are for the lights that tell you when the input is active and whether phantom is engaged. Nice breakdown. RØDE always make excellent quality products, and the NT1 and NT1-A tend to get underrated because of the price. The quality is excellent, though I prefer the NT1 to the NT1-A, which can be a bit brittle sounding. I can run an NT1 through the Neve controls strip of my UAD-2 Apollo preamp and get vocals that "experts" can't distinguish from a Neumann U47 or U87. They are far better than any of the current Neumann offerings with the possible exception of the TLM 107. The current U87-Ai is a disastrous mess of a mic. The NT1 bundle with this AI-1 is a steal! The price of the Rycote shock mount and pop filter alone is 80 USD. Add the price of the mic (which is extremely under priced, but I'm glad!), and you're getting this interface for nearly free if you buy B-stock or used. Buying B-stock and getting the unmatched 10 year warrantee is just a no-brainer. Even if this isn't your main interface, it's great to have something you can toss in a ruck sack and not have to even worry about a power supply! The one drawback is that you can't have simultaneous and/or separate headphone and monitor output. It's a bit overpriced as a standalone, honestly. But as part of the bundle, it's a great little add on. Love this review!
Yes, i agree %100 percent and just bought the kit but this is a pcb analysis so most of the people are not into mics and mic pres. By the way mine is on the way and i dont think shock mount is Rycote brand, rather than Rycote stayle. so i dont know adding 80 bucks to kits value is fair. but i agree mic is reaaallyyy close to u87 so even 400 bucks will be a steal for the kit.
you should ask Music/Behringer for a tour of their Chinese factory and see what a very large and very modern audio equipment factory is like, they seem to like giving tours and the CEO seems very willing to show off his new factory complex. esp. interesting would be that they produce both consumer level audio equipment there and high-end/very high-end audio equipment for studio and stage.
dglcomputers You seen one, you've seen them all. Factories in China aren't very unique. They all have a conveyor belt with seats/stations on either side of it.
They bought Midas, Klark Teknik, Turbosound, and various other high-end brands in live sound about 6 years ago. They're all under the "Music Group" flag. Not sure whether or not they're made in the same factories or not.
I have a Xenyx Q1002USB and the quality is terrible. Lot's of noise on the USB interface (and other people have that as well). Perhaps they also make better stuff but I know Behringer mostly for medium to low price stuff (which doesn't need to be bad considering the cost).
Well it depends. Starting with the X32 digital mixer series they are really passing the technology from the other companies to Behringer. The quality of their products (at least in the DSP segment - don't know about their other products) has drastically improved.
It's aluminium alloy die cast with further machining of the bottom lid mating plane . Actually there's nothing special about that as nearly all guitar FX pedals have enclosures like that which high gain preamps require thorough shielding.
If they make a lot then they could afford a custom mould for that. For instance recent Korg Electribe 2/Sampler and SDD-3000 delay recreation are also finished in aluminium die cast enclosures.
Rode microphone preamps have certainly gotten a lot more complicated since Doug's day! ("Another day, another Doug.") Time was you could use a jFET with a pilot light and a few BJTs, she'll be right; now you need all this digital rubbish and atta-watt Class OPQRS amplifiers. At least the main chipset comes close to the S/N ratio of a traditional microphone preamp with a choob up front.
Off-the shelf USB-audio chips typically only go to 48 KHz. There's also the issue of clock synchronization, which most integrated chips don't handle that well. With a micro you don't have these limitations, and can also implement extras, such as signaling the 4052 to route the analog signal to the headphone jack. What Rode did makes perfect sense.
Ooh, come on Dave, get to know audio stuff....what you´re pointing there at 17:00 on-going are no regulators...theye are the headphone amplifiers. As you need plenty of "juice" for 32 ohms standart Studio headphones (drummers go for DT-48) The X-tals are for the different clocks :44.1kHz, 48Khz may be the old 32Khz is still available for legacy.... Also USB audio chip stuff if expensive. take a look into a RME or a focusrite interface and you gonne see these chips you talking about, but we talk at least high tripple digits and for the higher-end range quad digit customer retail price....
Sorry Dave, after 13:30...you really need to seperate HiFi (high impedance) mics from Studio grade low impedance symetrical mics. 200Ohms is the usual source (=mik) impedance from a standart dynamic mic. If you use condenser mics which also have an active output stage their output impendance are ususally even lower. Therfore the trace length is not that critical. But the Line level input traces are much more critcal. As you are usually got 10k input impedance adn furthermore it´s non-symetrical (= hot and ground). Also sometimes the level is homerecording -10dB input (0.0775Vrms). So they really placed the main audio chip as close to the unbal. most sensitive input as they probably could without using a multilayer board.
I wish someone would do tear downs of USB device descriptors. Most USB audio devices rely on the default device descriptor provided by the silicon manufacturer and avoid paying masking costs. The result is a large number of devices that share the same vendor ID, device ID, vendor string and product string. Further, the serial number field is usually zero. The result is that you can have a wide range of devices that cannot be user identified in the user interfaces on various operating systems. For example, I have three instances of a USB Audio / Radio Modem Sound card, one commercial radio with built-in USB audio sound card, and a commercial high-end audio mixer board that all identify themselves as "USB Audio Codec", despite being from different manufacturers. All of these devices use the same silicon device from TI, and not one of them has their uses a mask option to provide a unique descriptor that allows them to be identified. Worse yet, some operating systems suppress redundant names from pop-up menu controls, making the devices unreachable by the user. The device manufactures need to be hung up by the gonads for not implementing their own device descriptors. Also, the descriptor information is never published with marketing material so you never know you're going to have a problem until after you buy the device. FWIW, this problem has existed since day 1 of USB audio. I worked with the author of the USB Audio Specification v1.0, and developed the first USB audio device driver for a major operating system, and this has ALWAYS been a problem.
i have a problem with my rode AI-1. i was playing and outof nowhere my motherboad leds just shut down. then my mic and headphones stopped working. no my pc can't detect it anymore. USB ports are fine. i tested them. no i have a dimm red led anymore. i can bearly see it on.
I still have one of the first Rode NT2's that came in to the USA. It doesn't work any longer, but I do still have it. I have a NTK that works great. :)
omsonic Yes, Dave really should brush up on his silkscreen reading skills, he keeps thinking Q is an IC and doesn't associate a LED labels with the big yellow LEDs next to them. The transistor bundles between input and ADC makes me wonder if there's an optional (MUX switched) discrete low noise preamp for weaker signals somewhere in that block. That would explain the long path for the unamplified signal, as it would only be used for strong inputs.
The cases likely start as a rough casting, and finish machined latter. No way a product like this would be using a case machined from a billet. Great video as usual Dave.
Anyone notice Dave doesn't really age much? Must be Australia or something. In Canada, we get the living shit kicked out of us 6 months out of the year...it's like we age 2 years for every 1 year a person who doesn't endure any winters ages. To those who think that is just a joke, I assure you it is absolutely the truth :(
Tom Jones Yeah, comparing similar aged Canadian and Australian UA-cam stars, they look 20 years apart. And one of those Canadians is "allergic" to heat anyway (and bicoastal).
The STM32F0 does not need a USB crystal, you can run internal oscillator and have it auto-trim itself to USB transitions and USB frame length - special feature on this one. Furthermore there is a separate USB crystal, it's the third one right near the F0!
Looks like a piece of green plastic to me, not a component. Maybe a piece of wire insulation, maybe even something Dave had stuck to the tip of his tools and lost in there.
what i think happened was the layout was finished with 2 standard connectors for input and headphone, than someone went "no lets use one of these multi connectors" and there was not enough room on the one side so they swapped the location of the connectors and some engineer was like "nah im not re-laying everything out" and just dragged the traces over and moved the mux and phantom power
Unlikely. I think the design is sufficiently deliberate, i mean you can't have the ADC right near the input because the analogue switch comes first. But for analogue switch to work, the preamp must come first. But since the preamp is there, the requirements are relaxed. Plus that thing is cramped, with that component density, that also affects how much room you have to work with for the traces, painfully little and you can't just have traces going willy nilly.
Couple of corrections. 5:58 it doesn't say "ultra low noise" it says "ultra low power" and then at 7:53 you say "121 dB" SNR for the ADC when the data sheet says 101dB (which isn't great at all).
yeah this is $130, or you can get a Scarlett Solo for $100 which has one more input and higher sample rate with essentially the same specs/noise level. I'm sure its fine for the purpose, but not industry leading.
Many usb audio ICs are not very advanced. They usually don't allow the device clock to dictate the rate of data transfer for low jitter, the computer just pumps it out. Also you want good low latency ASIO drivers.
Wojciech Lewenstam There are some which act as a DAC like the ES2093 but I'm not sure there are any / many that act as a full audio interface to support simultanious input and output at high res, asynchronous, low latency, etc..
That STM32F070 is nice. I am using it currently in a project. Under a dollar IC. I just wonder how they implemented the I2S interface using that as its SPI doesn't have I2S support. Of course it is possible to fake that with some kludgery as long as you keep strict frame sync and manage to get it to sync. Perhaps with some external login gates?
The I2S is on the main DAC/ADC/DSP chip, my guess is that the STM part is just used for its USB interface, although there must be something else going on to warrant the serial/parallel interface.
NAU88L25 outputs the digital audio data with I2S. That bit stream has to decoded for USB transport. F070 doesn't have full I2S logic to do that task. That is what I was wondering. That shift register is just serial to parallel IC to get more digital output to control different things on the PCB.
I think they're feeding the I2S into the 74HC595 serial input and then reading the parallel port with the micro. This guy is feeding I2S into a '595 github.com/lhartmann/esp8266_reprap I got the code from CNLohr on github, modified it to output a 32 bit counter (16 bit left + 16 bit right channels) via a circular DMA buffer, and created a small PCB with four cascaded 74HC595 shift registers. wiring is simple: I2S Data to '595 input data I2S Bitclock to '595 shift clock I2s word clock (left/right) to '595 buffer clock.
There is no point in converting I2S data to parallel format as F070 can input the data with SPI in DMA mode. And it can output at the same time as F070 can simultaneously both input and output through same SPI. The only problem is to get the word sync right. The bit rate is within F070 range, either 4 or 8 megabits per second and F070 maximum CPU clock is 48MHz.
Hi, I am planning to buy Rode NT1 complete studio set which includes the Rode AI-1 audio interface. The one offered in Amazon. Basically, the RODE AI-1 is for USB port devices like laptops and PCs. But my objective is to use it on my Iphone (IOS) particularly for the "Smule Sing!" App, it is a popular Karaoke app offered on smartphones. I have already found solutions on how I can connect it on my Iphone. I have searched on all the things I need in order to make it compatible with my Iphone. Rode AI-1 is powered from USB-C to USB-A. I have found out from youtube videos that I can connect it to my Iphone through an adapter, the Apple USB-A female to lightning male adapter. It works perfectly fine based on the videos and tutorials. But I have been searching on lots of reviews and I cannot find answer on this very crucial question. Based on the reviews, I am aware that the audio coming from RODE NT1 mic will come out to the Rode AI-1 audio output, the one on the right side where I will put the quarter inch audio jack. Now my question is, can I hear also from this output (Rode AI-1 quarter inch audio jack) the background music coming from my Iphone? I mean, the "Smule Sing!" app is supposedly a Karaoke app where I will be listening to the background music provided by the app while I am singing using the RODE NT1 mic. Now, I am worried if I can hear the music from that "Smule" app and on the same time, the sound coming from the RODE NT1 mic? I'm sure I will hear the sound coming from the mic but I'm not sure about the sound coming from my Iphone's "Smule" app. And I have the same question as to my laptop because if I will record a vocal with a music coming my laptop, will I hear that background music coming from my laptop? I hope I can get an answer from you. This is the only issue that prevents me from buying the set in Amazon and until now I cannot find an answer on it. Thanks and best regards,
Wow, that case was machined from a sold billet of aluminum! (Probably not a rough forging that was machined.) That's so expensive. But I guess they figured they'd not sell enough to go with another manufacturing technique that wouldn't provide cost savings until higher production numbers. But that's incredible to make that out of billet. Since they've got to machine off 98% of the metal for just a thin 5 sided box.
as someone higher up said lots of audio stuff is in Die-Cast aluminium cases (guitar effects pedals). theres no way that would be from a solid starting piece
In Rode's marketing stuff they describe it as a cast aluminum case. The original for the casting was machined (I'm guessing you're seeing the same telltale geometry that I am), then the critical stuff like that rim to inset the bottom "lid" and the threaded holes are machined.
Hi, I'm looking for the output impedance on the headphone amp on this. I looked up the thing you googled near the start of the vid. The nuvoton nau88l25b or whatever it was. I read through the manual and I think it says 32ohms. Would I be correct or would that info even be in the manual? Cheers
You usually need 2 separate crystals to support the 2 different sets of audio sample rates because generating them from a single source and dividing or multiplying it can cause a constantly changing phase shift in the sampled audio when the clock is not an exact multiple of the desired sample rate. This sounds like a very subtle phaser effect added to the recorded audio and it gets worse when you have to mix multiple takes together because the phase shifts themselves won't line up. Multiples of 44100 and 48000 are usually what make up the two different sets of rates and we only have Sony to blame for this... The mux is probably for switching between the XLR and 1/4" Jack input and since it is a dual 4 way mux they can probably also use the mux to invert the input signal as well.. that is if it isn't doing something else. So if you need to invert the input you can switch it in software rather than use a physical switch that could add noise. I normally like to design my preamps with the input having a more direct path into the ADC, but whatever. I also prefer the PGA2500 mic preamps before my ADCs and a 52v boost circuit that is linear regulated to 48v just before each XLR to reduce noise... but I'm just crazy. ;)
10100rsn Inversion can be done in the digital stage at almost zero cost and absolutely zero extra noise. While difficult during the DAT debacle, 7.056 MHz is a nice common multiple for clocking ADCs and DACs, though it doesn't have a nice common multiple with the USB bus (multiples of 12MHz).
I don't understand why they gave STM32F0 a crystal to begin with. It doesn't need one. If you run internal oscillator and enable USB, you can make it auto-trim the oscillator to the USB frame length, so it's always in sync with the host upstream. It's a special feature of this processor, F1 for example doesn't have it.
Most better codecs have SPI/I2C bus to access the extra bells and whistles (DSP effects, compression, auto-level, etc.) via an MCU. Some of your more basic codecs can operate in a "standalone" mode, using logic HI or LO on pins to set different parameters/features. All the ones I've ever worked with use differential in and outputs, and special bias input requirements, hence the need for all those op-amps. Also allows engineers to incorporate their own unique, tailored input pre-amp designs.
How did they manage to route the mic gain pot to the area towards the top right where the actual mic preamp seems to be located? I'm puzzled. You see, mic preamps have to be very low noise at high gain yet allow for some relatively high input levels at low gain while covering a substantial adjustment range, which pretty much means a gain pot in feedback - and feedback is not something I'd wanted stretched out across half the board. Granted, a nice differential run on one of the inner planes might work, but still. There is no way there isn't some sort of dedicated mic preamp there, as top-flight noise performance with dynamic mics mandates an input noise density of around 1 nV/sqrt(Hz) or even better, requiring either dedicated preamp chips or discrete circuitry.
Would this thing be class compliant, eg plug'n'play? I have the Rode NT-USB and while it is plug'n'play it's not quite class compliant. It will not work with ASIO4All because of the proprietary internal monitoring implementation. Rode have no drivers for it so it uses basic windows drivers. In WASAPI or WDM mode the latency is not great. The latency using the built in monitor is good though. It's not very useful if you have more than one audio interface. Rode said they only support the default configuration as a Windows default audio device Headphones and Microphone.
The STM32 is probably there to speed up the signal processing to send it over usb since I believe it has native usb support. It probably also does some control stuff to detect headphone jack and stuff like that. makes sense to use a 32 bit micro that is cheap and easy to program with native usb for something like that. The older USB DACs that had usb right off the codec had horrible latency.
Aren't those crystals too far from their chip? I know it's a superb product, but noise would be a concern for me, but they know what they are doing right
The thing that annoyed me about Rode when I looked at one of their products was it was cheaper to buy one in the US than in Australia where it was made.
Nope leaving the opamp away for filtering ac. Two filter caps with ac filter pull ups. You want output to be clean as. Wait till you get the nodd from rouge before other rouge wants to change #facepalm
The spacing is wrong. The circles which the C & E form parts of should overlap so they look like an 8 on its side. Rhode have used the China Export mark.
+silver & noise Missed point. The incorrect CE mark so often appears on non-compliant goods from China that it's come to be referred to as the 'China Export' mark.
Probably isn't. Voltage isn't critical, and isn't actually maintained in operation, you just shoot in the general vicinity of somewhere just under 50V without load, and if the output impedance is about 6-8 kOhm, that's fine, and you pad it up anyway with extra current limiting resistors until that's the case. Many microphone phantom supply circuits don't even deliver close to 48V open-circuit.
Dave, please consider putting shades into your office and or adjusting the auto white balance set point for the webcam, the washed out background behind you makes the video horrible to watch and the extra light also casts too bright onto your face, your forehead is saturated!
it is not continuous extrusion, but still it is extruded :-) it is "cast" extruded or however you call it, it is a hybrid process of casting and extrusion.
he knows far more about electronics than i ever will but its always slightly annoying when he has no clue about a standard audio technique (though what even is I2C??)
This is Dave's standard for 'no waffling video', if you want extra waffling, it gets 2 hours long. I'm not sure where you got i2c from, you probably meant i2s, the latter is a simple serial bus specifically for regularly sampled DACs and ADCs, basically data, clock, and word-clock. i2c is in turn a low-speed serial bus with address/message format and bidirectional communication on just 2 wires that can pass through up to hundreds of devices, you'll find it all over the place, in VGA/DVI/HDMI cables to query monitor ROM, in RAM sticks to query their configuration ROM, to talk to all kinds of sensors. To make things extra confusing, advanced soundchips like used here have both i2s and i2c, i2s delivers audio, while i2c serves for register writes to configure the operational parameters of the soundchip, like gain, filter, all those kinds of things.
Does this device support 24bit audio foolery? In that case, they might use an arm uC because there are almost no options when it comes to a commercial 1-chip codec solution. About the 3.9R resistors; aren't they simply rc-filtering the power rails to get the noise down? (USB power must be noisy as hell)
Most HiFi chips from Asia (Tenor, Commexant, VIA) support 24/96 over UAC1.0, and some UAC2.0 chips support 24/192. XMOS solutions support up to 32/768. 24 bit is not nonsense, it's very much needed if your analog recording settings screws up. You need the extra 8 bit to wipe the ass of whomever set recording level incorrectly. Want to get true 16 bit out after mastering? Get 24 bit in!
96K or 192K sampling rate can be classified as audiophoolery. But I can assure you that 24-bit sampling is NOT! It will save your bacon when you are recording something with unexpected peaks that would otherwise clip and ruin your recording. It has saved me more times than I can count. I would never record a live performance in 16 bit. Just asking for trouble.
Bo Gao Actually most of these DACs are not true 24-bit. In terms of SNR the good DACs has the equivalent of 20-bit. So yes indeed, bit depth makes a significant difference in audio production, where it is not uncommon to have dozens of takes playing simultaneously.
gonX 24 bit makes an even bigger difference in unpredictable live recording or when you have very limited level adjustment opportunity on a microphone input (and this box is dedicated to that), although in practice a logarithmic or floating point ADC would probably do as well, since it's all about adjusting the levels after the fact. As for > 48ksps recording, it allows you to use a much less aggressive Nyquist filter, avoiding the artifacts of using a filter that begins it's rolloff within the audible range. If final output is CD, the filter can be fine tuned according to desired sound, if final output is anything else, skip the CD-specific filter and only filter for the actual format generated, such as audio for an MPEG4 or WebM video, or a podcast for the Amp hour.
I should've left "audiofoolery" out of the comment :) I just meant that it's hard to find an off-the-shelf solution for one-chip codec that supports 24-bit@192KHz. At least, that was the case when I was looking for one. The CM6631A (C-Media) was the only thing I could find at the time, which had horrible support and shitty tools. I used an ARM instead :)
There are heaps of 1/4" balanced TRS connectors on things, like literally every mixer console and most audio interfaces/boxes have them. Stereo 1/4" is almost exclusively for headphones.
Thanks for sharing, we'd love to have you come around and check out the factory!
Hi! Please help. I need to stream hdmi with Canon M50 through Avio 4k. M50 does not have clean HDMI sound streaming. Just video. If i buy Rode AI-1 - can it link the computer to Rode Filmaker wireless mic, without any delay between sound and video?
Does it work on iPad Pro??
@@kire_S only on 2018 iPad Pro :-)
@EEVblog2 Pleases go and visit Rode factory!
I mean we all have seen PNP machines and Re-flow Ofens but they real interesting cnc machines, and i would love to see the diaphragm tuning process.
Show us some of there secret "secret sauce"
@RØDE How have you managed to increase the gain on this with a firmware update without increasing noise?
I think maybe that set of 4 power devices is an audio output stage, not regulators
Most definetly they are
Class D amplifier implementation for the headphone jack that could drive a minimum 8 Ohm driver per channel. This block is there in between the voltage multiplier block and Headphone out which could imply that the driver could be drawing its power from voltage multiplier.
Yeah looks like an over engineered headphone amplifier.
You're right. BL is a BCX56 NPN audio driver/output transistor and AL = BCX53 PNP complement. They appear to be configured as an output buffer of an opamp.
the master has spoken we need more vids from you please
I suspect the long trace length for the mic signal is because it's differential until the chip, so it should be more immune to noise than a presumably single-ended line level signal.
Straya, no worries. Love this video. Thanks for the great tear down.
Why is there so much freking stuff inside this? You need filtering, pre-amp, ADC, DAC, USB interface and 48v upscaler.. Although their efforts were rewarded with very low noise results
The reason for the end-mount XLR connector is because the main PC board is upside-down. That would put the XLR connector upside down which would be laughable. There are dozens of right-angle. PC-mount XLR connectors but they all assume the board is at the bottom. They could have put the rear connectors on the main board, but it would have made the box bigger and put the USB connector upside-down, also. D10 is likely a set of 4 clamp diodes to prevent phantom power switching transients from blasting the sensitive mic amp input circuit. Very common in transformerless mic preamp circuits with switchable phantom power. Nice looking product, though. Above average for USB sound interfaces.
USB-C upside down? Is this 4th dimension?
There are also a couple of right angle ones available that are the other way round, but I guess at the volume they buy these straight connectors possibly for other devices it was just much cheaper than to buy low volumes of relatively rare connectors.
A surprising number of devices do just have the XLR connectors upside down.
How can the PCB or the XLR connector be wrong way round?
The connectors don't have rotational symmetry, there's a convention to which way around they go.
Neutrik “Noy-trik” like Neumann “Noy-mann” 😉😉😉
Of course, I don’t pronounce Mexico like “Mehico,” so... 😳
Hakeem Hasworth So the name actually means "new trick", or "new technique" then?
I don't think the name really means anything, its just a combination of the name of one of the founding companies (NeuElektrik AG) and something else.
"new trick" would be "neuer trick"and "new technique" would be "neue technik" in German.
I just searched for and thought about this for a while but i couldn't find the full explanation.
According to their own web page, it appears to be a shortened form of "NeuElektrik".
Why didn't i see that, its obvious now :D
But i couldn't find that info on their web page (german version)
Btw, USB audio interface chips are difficult and expensive to get. Not to talk about rediculous licenses you have to pay. It's a nightmare for everyone designing audio equipment.
Nice to see this one, poorly designed though, far to complicated and weird board design as you mentioned.
The layout is correct, op-amps are near the the microphone input jack to bring up the gain on the input, Usually the op-amps are set up in 20db incriments and selected by the mux for 0db, 20db, 40db , 60db of gain for the input. Usually the in chip variable mic amp in the chip is only capable of 20db which is way to low for a dynamic mic. Not to mention that the entire signal path is balanced up to that chip. The I also would be very surprised if the phantom power is actually 48V if the capacitors are only 50V usually in these USB powered interfaces it is 24V or 36V which works fine, could be wrong. The 4 transistors are used as a power amp for the headphone possibly for the speaker output. And Crystal, you crack me up (old 16 bit ISA/PCI sound card chip for those that do not know).
Wow. Thanks. More than I could ever want to know about this piece of kit. BTW, the LED 2&3 bits are for the lights that tell you when the input is active and whether phantom is engaged. Nice breakdown. RØDE always make excellent quality products, and the NT1 and NT1-A tend to get underrated because of the price. The quality is excellent, though I prefer the NT1 to the NT1-A, which can be a bit brittle sounding. I can run an NT1 through the Neve controls strip of my UAD-2 Apollo preamp and get vocals that "experts" can't distinguish from a Neumann U47 or U87. They are far better than any of the current Neumann offerings with the possible exception of the TLM 107. The current U87-Ai is a disastrous mess of a mic. The NT1 bundle with this AI-1 is a steal! The price of the Rycote shock mount and pop filter alone is 80 USD. Add the price of the mic (which is extremely under priced, but I'm glad!), and you're getting this interface for nearly free if you buy B-stock or used. Buying B-stock and getting the unmatched 10 year warrantee is just a no-brainer. Even if this isn't your main interface, it's great to have something you can toss in a ruck sack and not have to even worry about a power supply! The one drawback is that you can't have simultaneous and/or separate headphone and monitor output. It's a bit overpriced as a standalone, honestly. But as part of the bundle, it's a great little add on. Love this review!
Yes, i agree %100 percent and just bought the kit but this is a pcb analysis so most of the people are not into mics and mic pres. By the way mine is on the way and i dont think shock mount is Rycote brand, rather than Rycote stayle. so i dont know adding 80 bucks to kits value is fair. but i agree mic is reaaallyyy close to u87 so even 400 bucks will be a steal for the kit.
@@pauliewalnuts1024 no way it close to a u87
Those four large "regulators" are transistors for headphone amplifier! They even say Q-something.
Ah, that makes more sense, missed that.
Throw another board on the barbie! We've converted it for wave soldering.
you should ask Music/Behringer for a tour of their Chinese factory and see what a very large and very modern audio equipment factory is like, they seem to like giving tours and the CEO seems very willing to show off his new factory complex.
esp. interesting would be that they produce both consumer level audio equipment there and high-end/very high-end audio equipment for studio and stage.
dglcomputers You seen one, you've seen them all. Factories in China aren't very unique. They all have a conveyor belt with seats/stations on either side of it.
I didn't know Behringer made high end stuff?
They bought Midas, Klark Teknik, Turbosound, and various other high-end brands in live sound about 6 years ago. They're all under the "Music Group" flag. Not sure whether or not they're made in the same factories or not.
I have a Xenyx Q1002USB and the quality is terrible. Lot's of noise on the USB interface (and other people have that as well). Perhaps they also make better stuff but I know Behringer mostly for medium to low price stuff (which doesn't need to be bad considering the cost).
Well it depends. Starting with the X32 digital mixer series they are really passing the technology from the other companies to Behringer. The quality of their products (at least in the DSP segment - don't know about their other products) has drastically improved.
Don't use xSplit, terrible POS... OBS Studio > xSplit!
It's aluminium alloy die cast with further machining of the bottom lid mating plane . Actually there's nothing special about that as nearly all guitar FX pedals have enclosures like that which high gain preamps require thorough shielding.
MSM5500 May be a standard enclosure, just different front/back holes and paint job per product.
If they make a lot then they could afford a custom mould for that. For instance recent Korg Electribe 2/Sampler and SDD-3000 delay recreation are also finished in aluminium die cast enclosures.
Rode microphone preamps have certainly gotten a lot more complicated since Doug's day! ("Another day, another Doug.") Time was you could use a jFET with a pilot light and a few BJTs, she'll be right; now you need all this digital rubbish and atta-watt Class OPQRS amplifiers.
At least the main chipset comes close to the S/N ratio of a traditional microphone preamp with a choob up front.
Why additional TCXO's:
Audio DAC needs 24Mhz and 22.576MHz for PCM signal that's multiple of 44.1kHz and 48kHz.
Off-the shelf USB-audio chips typically only go to 48 KHz. There's also the issue of clock synchronization, which most integrated chips don't handle that well. With a micro you don't have these limitations, and can also implement extras, such as signaling the 4052 to route the analog signal to the headphone jack. What Rode did makes perfect sense.
Ooh, come on Dave, get to know audio stuff....what you´re pointing there at 17:00 on-going are no regulators...theye are the headphone amplifiers. As you need plenty of "juice" for 32 ohms standart Studio headphones (drummers go for DT-48)
The X-tals are for the different clocks :44.1kHz, 48Khz may be the old 32Khz is still available for legacy....
Also USB audio chip stuff if expensive. take a look into a RME or a focusrite interface and you gonne see these chips you talking about, but we talk at least high tripple digits and for the higher-end range quad digit customer retail price....
What's the little green rectangle above the cap at 9:45?
Wot's this: A video suggestion I'm actually interested in?
On the same day video was posted?
*THE ALGORITHM MUST BE BROKEN!!*
Sorry Dave, after 13:30...you really need to seperate HiFi (high impedance) mics from Studio grade low impedance symetrical mics. 200Ohms is the usual source (=mik) impedance from a standart dynamic mic. If you use condenser mics which also have an active output stage their output impendance are ususally even lower.
Therfore the trace length is not that critical.
But the Line level input traces are much more critcal. As you are usually got 10k input impedance adn furthermore it´s non-symetrical (= hot and ground). Also sometimes the level is homerecording -10dB input (0.0775Vrms). So they really placed the main audio chip as close to the unbal. most sensitive input as they probably could without using a multilayer board.
I wish someone would do tear downs of USB device descriptors. Most USB audio devices rely on the default device descriptor provided by the silicon manufacturer and avoid paying masking costs. The result is a large number of devices that share the same vendor ID, device ID, vendor string and product string. Further, the serial number field is usually zero. The result is that you can have a wide range of devices that cannot be user identified in the user interfaces on various operating systems. For example, I have three instances of a USB Audio / Radio Modem Sound card, one commercial radio with built-in USB audio sound card, and a commercial high-end audio mixer board that all identify themselves as "USB Audio Codec", despite being from different manufacturers. All of these devices use the same silicon device from TI, and not one of them has their uses a mask option to provide a unique descriptor that allows them to be identified. Worse yet, some operating systems suppress redundant names from pop-up menu controls, making the devices unreachable by the user. The device manufactures need to be hung up by the gonads for not implementing their own device descriptors.
Also, the descriptor information is never published with marketing material so you never know you're going to have a problem until after you buy the device.
FWIW, this problem has existed since day 1 of USB audio. I worked with the author of the USB Audio Specification v1.0, and developed the first USB audio device driver for a major operating system, and this has ALWAYS been a problem.
i have a problem with my rode AI-1. i was playing and outof nowhere my motherboad leds just shut down. then my mic and headphones stopped working. no my pc can't detect it anymore. USB ports are fine. i tested them. no i have a dimm red led anymore. i can bearly see it on.
I still have one of the first Rode NT2's that came in to the USA. It doesn't work any longer, but I do still have it. I have a NTK that works great. :)
All those SOT-23-6 packages are all dual transistors some of them may be matched too.
omsonic Yes, Dave really should brush up on his silkscreen reading skills, he keeps thinking Q is an IC and doesn't associate a LED labels with the big yellow LEDs next to them. The transistor bundles between input and ADC makes me wonder if there's an optional (MUX switched) discrete low noise preamp for weaker signals somewhere in that block. That would explain the long path for the unamplified signal, as it would only be used for strong inputs.
The cases likely start as a rough casting, and finish machined latter. No way a product like this would be using a case machined from a billet.
Great video as usual Dave.
Anyone notice Dave doesn't really age much? Must be Australia or something. In Canada, we get the living shit kicked out of us 6 months out of the year...it's like we age 2 years for every 1 year a person who doesn't endure any winters ages. To those who think that is just a joke, I assure you it is absolutely the truth :(
Tom Jones Yeah, comparing similar aged Canadian and Australian UA-cam stars, they look 20 years apart. And one of those Canadians is "allergic" to heat anyway (and bicoastal).
Might it have something to do with lifestyle and/or genetics? I know Dave is really into the healthy lifestyle.
Martin audio and fairlight all came from the greatest place in the world
Why two Crystals?
Because USB needs 12MHz and the Sampling Quarz has 12,228MHz.
Its cheaper to use two different Crystals than a Crystal and a PLL.
The STM32F0 does not need a USB crystal, you can run internal oscillator and have it auto-trim itself to USB transitions and USB frame length - special feature on this one. Furthermore there is a separate USB crystal, it's the third one right near the F0!
What's that green thingy at 9:47 flapping in the breeze between the two caps? oO Looks like some loose component.
Looks like a piece of green plastic to me, not a component. Maybe a piece of wire insulation, maybe even something Dave had stuck to the tip of his tools and lost in there.
Did Dougy design it? Oh...wait, there are no GALs in it...couldn't have been him! (Jk Doug...you are a badass EE)
what i think happened was the layout was finished with 2 standard connectors for input and headphone, than someone went "no lets use one of these multi connectors" and there was not enough room on the one side so they swapped the location of the connectors and some engineer was like "nah im not re-laying everything out" and just dragged the traces over and moved the mux and phantom power
Unlikely. I think the design is sufficiently deliberate, i mean you can't have the ADC right near the input because the analogue switch comes first. But for analogue switch to work, the preamp must come first. But since the preamp is there, the requirements are relaxed. Plus that thing is cramped, with that component density, that also affects how much room you have to work with for the traces, painfully little and you can't just have traces going willy nilly.
The opamp and the tranies at the left side looks like a headphone amplifier.
Couple of corrections. 5:58 it doesn't say "ultra low noise" it says "ultra low power" and then at 7:53 you say "121 dB" SNR for the ADC when the data sheet says 101dB (which isn't great at all).
yeah this is $130, or you can get a Scarlett Solo for $100 which has one more input and higher sample rate with essentially the same specs/noise level. I'm sure its fine for the purpose, but not industry leading.
Many usb audio ICs are not very advanced. They usually don't allow the device clock to dictate the rate of data transfer for low jitter, the computer just pumps it out. Also you want good low latency ASIO drivers.
Many modern ones have asynchoronous mode.
Wojciech Lewenstam There are some which act as a DAC like the ES2093 but I'm not sure there are any / many that act as a full audio interface to support simultanious input and output at high res, asynchronous, low latency, etc..
That STM32F070 is nice. I am using it currently in a project. Under a dollar IC. I just wonder how they implemented the I2S interface using that as its SPI doesn't have I2S support. Of course it is possible to fake that with some kludgery as long as you keep strict frame sync and manage to get it to sync. Perhaps with some external login gates?
The I2S is on the main DAC/ADC/DSP chip, my guess is that the STM part is just used for its USB interface, although there must be something else going on to warrant the serial/parallel interface.
NAU88L25 outputs the digital audio data with I2S. That bit stream has to decoded for USB transport. F070 doesn't have full I2S logic to do that task. That is what I was wondering. That shift register is just serial to parallel IC to get more digital output to control different things on the PCB.
I think they're feeding the I2S into the 74HC595 serial input and then reading the parallel port with the micro.
This guy is feeding I2S into a '595
github.com/lhartmann/esp8266_reprap
I got the code from CNLohr on github, modified it to output a 32 bit counter (16 bit left + 16 bit right channels) via a circular DMA buffer, and created a small PCB with four cascaded 74HC595 shift registers. wiring is simple:
I2S Data to '595 input data
I2S Bitclock to '595 shift clock
I2s word clock (left/right) to '595 buffer clock.
There is no point in converting I2S data to parallel format as F070 can input the data with SPI in DMA mode. And it can output at the same time as F070 can simultaneously both input and output through same SPI. The only problem is to get the word sync right. The bit rate is within F070 range, either 4 or 8 megabits per second and F070 maximum CPU clock is 48MHz.
Alo762 - true. See my later comment.
I like the wizard of Oz. I like the Tin Man….
"Made in Australia"! Good on ya, cobber!
Hi, I am planning to buy Rode NT1 complete studio set which includes the Rode AI-1 audio interface. The one offered in Amazon. Basically, the RODE AI-1 is for USB port devices like laptops and PCs. But my objective is to use it on my Iphone (IOS) particularly for the "Smule Sing!" App, it is a popular Karaoke app offered on smartphones. I have already found solutions on how I can connect it on my Iphone. I have searched on all the things I need in order to make it compatible with my Iphone. Rode AI-1 is powered from USB-C to USB-A. I have found out from youtube videos that I can connect it to my Iphone through an adapter, the Apple USB-A female to lightning male adapter. It works perfectly fine based on the videos and tutorials. But I have been searching on lots of reviews and I cannot find answer on this very crucial question. Based on the reviews, I am aware that the audio coming from RODE NT1 mic will come out to the Rode AI-1 audio output, the one on the right side where I will put the quarter inch audio jack. Now my question is, can I hear also from this output (Rode AI-1 quarter inch audio jack) the background music coming from my Iphone? I mean, the "Smule Sing!" app is supposedly a Karaoke app where I will be listening to the background music provided by the app while I am singing using the RODE NT1 mic. Now, I am worried if I can hear the music from that "Smule" app and on the same time, the sound coming from the RODE NT1 mic? I'm sure I will hear the sound coming from the mic but I'm not sure about the sound coming from my Iphone's "Smule" app. And I have the same question as to my laptop because if I will record a vocal with a music coming my laptop, will I hear that background music coming from my laptop? I hope I can get an answer from you. This is the only issue that prevents me from buying the set in Amazon and until now I cannot find an answer on it.
Thanks and best regards,
a downside to being this early is there aren't enough comments to read while watching the video
Wow, that case was machined from a sold billet of aluminum! (Probably not a rough forging that was machined.) That's so expensive. But I guess they figured they'd not sell enough to go with another manufacturing technique that wouldn't provide cost savings until higher production numbers. But that's incredible to make that out of billet. Since they've got to machine off 98% of the metal for just a thin 5 sided box.
do you recycle the machined aluminum or is it pure waste?
It was casted then machined. Machining solid slab is horribly inneficent.
as someone higher up said lots of audio stuff is in Die-Cast aluminium cases (guitar effects pedals). theres no way that would be from a solid starting piece
Of course you would recycle it!
In Rode's marketing stuff they describe it as a cast aluminum case. The original for the casting was machined (I'm guessing you're seeing the same telltale geometry that I am), then the critical stuff like that rim to inset the bottom "lid" and the threaded holes are machined.
Amazing videooo😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
Hi, I'm looking for the output impedance on the headphone amp on this. I looked up the thing you googled near the start of the vid. The nuvoton nau88l25b or whatever it was. I read through the manual and I think it says 32ohms. Would I be correct or would that info even be in the manual? Cheers
You usually need 2 separate crystals to support the 2 different sets of audio sample rates because generating them from a single source and dividing or multiplying it can cause a constantly changing phase shift in the sampled audio when the clock is not an exact multiple of the desired sample rate. This sounds like a very subtle phaser effect added to the recorded audio and it gets worse when you have to mix multiple takes together because the phase shifts themselves won't line up. Multiples of 44100 and 48000 are usually what make up the two different sets of rates and we only have Sony to blame for this...
The mux is probably for switching between the XLR and 1/4" Jack input and since it is a dual 4 way mux they can probably also use the mux to invert the input signal as well.. that is if it isn't doing something else. So if you need to invert the input you can switch it in software rather than use a physical switch that could add noise. I normally like to design my preamps with the input having a more direct path into the ADC, but whatever. I also prefer the PGA2500 mic preamps before my ADCs and a 52v boost circuit that is linear regulated to 48v just before each XLR to reduce noise... but I'm just crazy. ;)
10100rsn Inversion can be done in the digital stage at almost zero cost and absolutely zero extra noise.
While difficult during the DAT debacle, 7.056 MHz is a nice common multiple for clocking ADCs and DACs, though it doesn't have a nice common multiple with the USB bus (multiples of 12MHz).
I don't understand why they gave STM32F0 a crystal to begin with. It doesn't need one. If you run internal oscillator and enable USB, you can make it auto-trim the oscillator to the USB frame length, so it's always in sync with the host upstream. It's a special feature of this processor, F1 for example doesn't have it.
Most better codecs have SPI/I2C bus to access the extra bells and whistles (DSP effects, compression, auto-level, etc.) via an MCU. Some of your more basic codecs can operate in a "standalone" mode, using logic HI or LO on pins to set different parameters/features. All the ones I've ever worked with use differential in and outputs, and special bias input requirements, hence the need for all those op-amps. Also allows engineers to incorporate their own unique, tailored input pre-amp designs.
Phantom power always has 6k8 resistors in series
How did they manage to route the mic gain pot to the area towards the top right where the actual mic preamp seems to be located? I'm puzzled. You see, mic preamps have to be very low noise at high gain yet allow for some relatively high input levels at low gain while covering a substantial adjustment range, which pretty much means a gain pot in feedback - and feedback is not something I'd wanted stretched out across half the board. Granted, a nice differential run on one of the inner planes might work, but still.
There is no way there isn't some sort of dedicated mic preamp there, as top-flight noise performance with dynamic mics mandates an input noise density of around 1 nV/sqrt(Hz) or even better, requiring either dedicated preamp chips or discrete circuitry.
Would this thing be class compliant, eg plug'n'play?
I have the Rode NT-USB and while it is plug'n'play it's not quite class compliant. It will not work with ASIO4All because of the proprietary internal monitoring implementation. Rode have no drivers for it so it uses basic windows drivers. In WASAPI or WDM mode the latency is not great. The latency using the built in monitor is good though. It's not very useful if you have more than one audio interface. Rode said they only support the default configuration as a Windows default audio device Headphones and Microphone.
Not that great package design. Don’t like the use of daughterboards and a low end Taiwanese chipset. Dave likes it because it’s made in Australia.
The STM32 is probably there to speed up the signal processing to send it over usb since I believe it has native usb support. It probably also does some control stuff to detect headphone jack and stuff like that. makes sense to use a 32 bit micro that is cheap and easy to program with native usb for something like that. The older USB DACs that had usb right off the codec had horrible latency.
Aren't those crystals too far from their chip? I know it's a superb product, but noise would be a concern for me, but they know what they are doing right
The thing that annoyed me about Rode when I looked at one of their products was it was cheaper to buy one in the US than in Australia where it was made.
I think the best setup is the re20 and a cloud lifter. the re320 is cheaper but duller.
Maybe the ADC mic chip is where it is to get it away from the lines from the voltage multiplier before it gets fully filtered.
OMG this video is interesting ! I Just bought a NT-1 and AI-1 set , I LOVE RODE !!
What was the components above the regulators that looked like selectable jumpers? 0R resistors ? ( 17:39)
Nope leaving the opamp away for filtering ac. Two filter caps with ac filter pull ups. You want output to be clean as. Wait till you get the nodd from rouge before other rouge wants to change #facepalm
Whatever components there are and whereevery they are and for god knows why, the thing is awesome performance for the price.
Well,for that price why not buy a small mixer like the Allen & heath ZED-10? That has a good quality sound too AND more channels
It's 150 AUD for Rode Ai-1 vs 350 AUD for Allen & heath ZED-10. :(
at 19:30, cold solder joints on the ribbon cable? Hmmmm, looks shoddy to me.
I spy a fake CE mark on the base.
Yes! I'm surprised they weren't able to get that right!
The spacing is wrong. The circles which the C & E form parts of should overlap so they look like an 8 on its side. Rhode have used the China Export mark.
+silver & noise Missed point. The incorrect CE mark so often appears on non-compliant goods from China that it's come to be referred to as the 'China Export' mark.
Make some "ON AIR" sign lit up when recording.
Nice kit, now get it online and remove the hum from your audio.
Don't forget to re-solder those bad joints.
those sot23 packages are probably buffers...
is it a sound card? does it have ASIO drivers?
There are not a regulators.. it just a transistor amplifier
A micro?! Why didn't they just use a 555?!
60fps 😍
Hey Dave, whats the random green thing between the two caps at 10:51?
Is that a resistor @9:26 at top center, between caps?????
id love to see a tour of the Rode plant..
you needed to bodge this video eh (T-shirt)
Some people study something
well, it's good or not?
Thanks for sharing :-)
ø
TheAmmoniacal RØDE
Made in 'Stralia !
How is the 48V regulation done?
Probably isn't. Voltage isn't critical, and isn't actually maintained in operation, you just shoot in the general vicinity of somewhere just under 50V without load, and if the output impedance is about 6-8 kOhm, that's fine, and you pad it up anyway with extra current limiting resistors until that's the case. Many microphone phantom supply circuits don't even deliver close to 48V open-circuit.
Best t-shirt ever!
Dave, please consider putting shades into your office and or adjusting the auto white balance set point for the webcam, the washed out background behind you makes the video horrible to watch and the extra light also casts too bright onto your face, your forehead is saturated!
the case looks extruded and then machined :-)
It doesn't have a lid on the top side, the enclosure is solid there, so it's not an extrusion.
it is not continuous extrusion, but still it is extruded :-)
it is "cast" extruded or however you call it, it is a hybrid process of casting and extrusion.
'Die-cast' might be the word you're looking for.
Hybrid Die Casting is more what I meant, it means part casting part extrusion, it is neither to the full extend.
I love rode but this thing is shit. But the price is so low that I can't judge them.
28 Min's of waffling
he knows far more about electronics than i ever will but its always slightly annoying when he has no clue about a standard audio technique (though what even is I2C??)
I would love to see him do a "no waffling video ", you think he can do it
This is Dave's standard for 'no waffling video', if you want extra waffling, it gets 2 hours long.
I'm not sure where you got i2c from, you probably meant i2s, the latter is a simple serial bus specifically for regularly sampled DACs and ADCs, basically data, clock, and word-clock. i2c is in turn a low-speed serial bus with address/message format and bidirectional communication on just 2 wires that can pass through up to hundreds of devices, you'll find it all over the place, in VGA/DVI/HDMI cables to query monitor ROM, in RAM sticks to query their configuration ROM, to talk to all kinds of sensors. To make things extra confusing, advanced soundchips like used here have both i2s and i2c, i2s delivers audio, while i2c serves for register writes to configure the operational parameters of the soundchip, like gain, filter, all those kinds of things.
he doesn't know what he's talking about 80% of the time, or he would have a real job ppl
Does this device support 24bit audio foolery? In that case, they might use an arm uC because there are almost no options when it comes to a commercial 1-chip codec solution. About the 3.9R resistors; aren't they simply rc-filtering the power rails to get the noise down? (USB power must be noisy as hell)
Most HiFi chips from Asia (Tenor, Commexant, VIA) support 24/96 over UAC1.0, and some UAC2.0 chips support 24/192. XMOS solutions support up to 32/768. 24 bit is not nonsense, it's very much needed if your analog recording settings screws up. You need the extra 8 bit to wipe the ass of whomever set recording level incorrectly. Want to get true 16 bit out after mastering? Get 24 bit in!
96K or 192K sampling rate can be classified as audiophoolery. But I can assure you that 24-bit sampling is NOT! It will save your bacon when you are recording something with unexpected peaks that would otherwise clip and ruin your recording. It has saved me more times than I can count. I would never record a live performance in 16 bit. Just asking for trouble.
Bo Gao Actually most of these DACs are not true 24-bit. In terms of SNR the good DACs has the equivalent of 20-bit. So yes indeed, bit depth makes a significant difference in audio production, where it is not uncommon to have dozens of takes playing simultaneously.
gonX 24 bit makes an even bigger difference in unpredictable live recording or when you have very limited level adjustment opportunity on a microphone input (and this box is dedicated to that), although in practice a logarithmic or floating point ADC would probably do as well, since it's all about adjusting the levels after the fact.
As for > 48ksps recording, it allows you to use a much less aggressive Nyquist filter, avoiding the artifacts of using a filter that begins it's rolloff within the audible range. If final output is CD, the filter can be fine tuned according to desired sound, if final output is anything else, skip the CD-specific filter and only filter for the actual format generated, such as audio for an MPEG4 or WebM video, or a podcast for the Amp hour.
I should've left "audiofoolery" out of the comment :) I just meant that it's hard to find an off-the-shelf solution for one-chip codec that supports 24-bit@192KHz. At least, that was the case when I was looking for one. The CM6631A (C-Media) was the only thing I could find at the time, which had horrible support and shitty tools. I used an ARM instead :)
Will there be hi-res pictures of this teardown?
No, sorry.
EEVblog2 bummer
Camera focus kind of sucks...
1/4 inch outputs are not balanced
They often are on pro audio equipment. Tip ring sleeve.
Coolkeys2009 interesting didn't know that! Normally that would be stereo unbalanced.
There are heaps of 1/4" balanced TRS connectors on things, like literally every mixer console and most audio interfaces/boxes have them.
Stereo 1/4" is almost exclusively for headphones.
is a dac