On the drawing board is our next Revision(D) of the main DSP board

[Tranquility Bass]

On the drawing board is our next Revision(D) of the main DSP board which now features an upgraded ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) from the existing 24 bit TI part to the Flagship ES9822PRO 32 bit ESSTech ADC. The ES9822PRO ADC features ESS proprietary Hyperstream II ADC Architecture, which delivers unprecedented conversion performance and yields top notch specs of 124 dB DNR and -117 dB THD+Noise. The ES9822PRO has an Ultra-Low Noise Floor Bandwidth of 200kHz. This bandwidth is up to 10 times wider than the competition, enabling higher resolution at higher sampling rates and along with the ESS 8-channel ES9038PRO Sabre DAC and our own onboard FEMTO master clock providing infinitesimal jitter we are certain this should satisfy the most fastidious analog aficionados who are into vinyl or reel-to-reel playback ! 

[monotube]

Looks like an excellent improvement! Will there be any other changes to the card?

[MichaelH]

Excellent work as usual David.

[Tranquility Bass]

Looks like an excellent improvement! Will there be any other changes to the card?

Mainly the ADC is the biggest upgrade otherwise everything else is the same

cheers
david

[yoke]

Hi David,
Any plans for lower cost modular option ?

I'm building new pair of loudspekaers, active witn hypex mcXXXmp amplifiers.

For me, it would be great if I could place DSP inside loudspeaker cabinet.
So I would need two DSP boards, one for left and one for right channel

Hypex have some 3 way DSP solution (FA series) but thay are not high end as yours.

Olso, it would be great to have some option for presets.
So that we dom't have to use audioweaver every time we would like to "hear" or compare two diferent setings...not to mention licence for it...

Any way, I know how much work and time you invest into those, thay are high end products but it would be great to hove something that is more affordable for "normal" diyer.

I think that now days active sistems are great solition as we have more and more good and low cost amplofiers and drivers but we are limited with DSP solution.

I belive that you know how to make good product, and maybe to produce raedy made main DSP boards with kit option (PCB with or without parts) for diy (power supply and output boards or so).

Sorry for bad english

Best regards
Josip

[Tranquility Bass]

Hi David,
Any plans for lower cost modular option ?

I'm building new pair of loudspekaers, active witn hypex mcXXXmp amplifiers.

For me, it would be great if I could place DSP inside loudspeaker cabinet.
So I would need two DSP boards, one for left and one for right channel

Hypex have some 3 way DSP solution (FA series) but thay are not high end as yours.

Olso, it would be great to have some option for presets.
So that we dom't have to use audioweaver every time we would like to "hear" or compare two diferent setings...not to mention licence for it...

Any way, I know how much work and time you invest into those, thay are high end products but it would be great to hove something that is more affordable for "normal" diyer.

I think that now days active sistems are great solition as we have more and more good and low cost amplofiers and drivers but we are limited with DSP solution.

I belive that you know how to make good product, and maybe to produce raedy made main DSP boards with kit option (PCB with or without parts) for diy (power supply and output boards or so).

Sorry for bad english

Best regards
Josip

Hi Josip

Yes I have plans for a very high cost option for an international speaker builder but not a low cost one at the moment.

Having said that, at one stage I did contemplate on moving manufacturing to China to take advantage of economies of scale and locality to produce a much lower cost Preamp but because of covid the plans were scuttled

I understand your need to switch different Audioweaver configs and many others have inquired about this ability but am not sure if DSP Concepts has implemented this ability yet.

It might be worth revisiting the DSP board offering again but have a single board solution where all of the connectors are mounted on the same board rather than scattered across multiple daughter boards but with a greatly reduced feature set.

Regards
David

[hoschi]

Any update on the Board?
Upgrade to all latest chips would be amazing.
ES9039PRO
ES9842PRO
Latest sharc dsp.
Dsd 512 or 1024 capability. That would be amazing😄

[Tranquility Bass]

Any update on the Board?
Upgrade to all latest chips would be amazing.
ES9039PRO
ES9842PRO
Latest sharc dsp.
Dsd 512 or 1024 capability. That would be amazing😄

From what I can see from the datasheets the only thing that the 9039 offers over the 9038PRO is support for MQA but that is now dead in the water so I wouldn't want to change that part. The Rev:D board includes the new ADC but I am still using the Rev:C board for prototyping. I'm not sure if I would want to upgrade to a newer SHARC part because that means a complete board re-design using a BGA part and migration to a new development platform and for the additional performance it is probably not worth the effort. Also I don't think I can easily integrate the newer versions of Audioweaver as they changed their format after 6.17 which relies on the base support package running exclusively on the SHARC DSP so the necessity for another slave micro just for house-keeping. This means you have to write special custom functions for Audioweaver just to control things like DAC volume and input source selection etc and with all of the options that are on the existing Preamp this would become unwieldy very quickly

From a DSP perspective and given what I have been able to achieve on the UPP using an external PC it would probably be more prudent to offer an upgrade to existing UP2 owners for this capability rather than redesign a new board when the existing Rev:C board works so well Not only that you get to use the latest version of Audioweaver on the PC whilst the SHARC DSP is still locked into using the earlier version of Audioweaver. The DSD limit of DSD-256 was limited by the master clock from the Amanero USB audio interface device.

https://analog-precision.com/forum/performance-and-measurements/ultimate-preamp-vs-deqx/msg937/#msg937

[hoschi]

With the right firmware the amanero should be able to do 512 i think.
Not to be stuck on the 6.17 Version would be great!
I upgraded to the amanero768, better clock and better Isolation. Could even run dsd2048, but don't think that will be a needed option😃
A later sharc model would allow higher sample rates like 384 or 767 pcm. I think that could be a great improvement. But yeah, is it worth a complete redesign, I can't answer that.
Your Measurements look great for sure!

[Tranquility Bass]

After version 6.17 of Audioweaver DSP concepts changed the base support package so you could no longer integrate your own code with the Audioweaver code so from thereon the Audioweaver code has exclusive control of the DSP and you talk to it through another host micro. Because of that, you have to write special routines in the Audioweaver base support package just to do simple things like change the master volume etc. As I do a large amount of housekeeping functions on the SHARC DSP this is not practical nor do I have a host micro on the board. Having said that, you can still leverage the latest version of Audioweaver by running it on a PC and use the audio-conduit functionality offered by the Ultimate-Preamp Plus and this will not impact on the sound quality at all whilst expanding the DSP functionality. If you don't want to use a PC or don't need to use Audioweaver then you could use something like a Raspberry Pi-5 which uses a Broadcom BCM2712 with 4-cores based on an ARM-Cortex A76 with plenty of Level 1/2/3 cache and really cheap too at $133 AUD a piece the last time I checked

And I just checked there is a version of Audioweaver that runs on a Rasberry Pi. Not sure if this will interface with the UPP but it's a possibility

https://dspconcepts.com/forums/audio-weaver-general/362-does-dsp-concepts-have-runtime-raspberry-pi-3

Does DSP Concepts have a runtime for the Raspberry Pi 3 ?

Yes, we offer two different products that can run on the Raspberry Pi 3.

1. AWE_command_line - This is the Audio Weaver Server command line application, which relies on ALSA to handle audio inputs and outputs. On the Raspberry Pi 3, to handle real-time audio we usually use a USB sound card (something like the "Plugable USB Audio Adapter"). Usage of AWE_command_line can be seen in our 'Linux Integration Guide' here: https://dspconcepts.com/support

2. AWELib - Delivered as a set of libraries with example/reference integrations, AWELib provides an API to create and tune your audio processing system and is easily integrated into other applications. With AWELib, it is up to the user to implement the audio inputs and outputs.

 

Both AWE_command_line and AWELib running on your Pi can connect directly to Designer on your PC for testing and tuning purposes. Alternatively, user created scripts or applications can be used to interact with and tune your Audio Weaver driven systems.

 

If you're interested in evaluating one or both of these products, please email info@dspconcepts.com to begin an engagement.

 

Thanks

-Axel