PCM3168A question

Ok, thanks.

Off to work  :)

 Hello Michael, 

did you ever make any headway with the PCM3168A chip?  I've been considering connecting it to a Silicon Labs CP2114 USB to I²S Audio Bridge Evaluation board.  I'm attempting to indivdually sample the strings on an instrument and so far I can only find stereo codec chips and this is the only chip that has the full 6 analog to digital inputs I need.  It even comes in a package that is fairly easy to solder onto a board.  However, I feel that perhaps Texas Instruments have reserved this chip for big name compaines?   I can't find any individual using it for some sort of hobby project.  And the thing is, it seems to have such amazing qualities, with very good SNR and THD, yet it's marketed towards the auto industry for in car cd players and such.

I'll probably have to settle for using 3 individual CS42L55EK audio codecs.  My CP2114 development board with an add on board that has a single stereo codec chip on it and it sounds extremely good.  It has a high quality stereo adc.  I should be able to solder three of these onto my own development board and stream them all through the I2S interface. However, I'm having a hard time getting a footing on how exactly the whole I2S multi-chip works.  Searching Amazon for books on I2S and such m'I  'I

That's been quite a while back, and unfortunately, the dev board that we were trying to use to drive the PCM3168A had some issues with kernel development, so it killed the project. The PCM3168A, however, was a dream to work with. IIRC, it required six separate I2S feeds and, yes, the THD and SNR were exceptional. That part of the project was a shoe in. The audio output was professional quality by anybody's standards. I still have the prints around somewhere I think. I cannot release them (proprietary information) but I could verify the setup if it would help.

And yes, that was the only chip I could locate with a full six separate inputs and outputs, which we needed for this particular project.

Michael

Thanks Michael.  I've been reading constantly about the I2S interface and it's proving itself difficult to track down specific information on how it works exactly.  Almost all of the information provided by major manufacturers assumes you have a prior working knowledge. 

Can you answer a question for me?  Will the I2S interface on the silicon labs CP2114 evaluation board allow the streaming of all 6 channels from the PCM3168A?  Each stereo channel requires it's own i2s input pin on the cp2114 wouldn't it?  I get the feeling that it's only designed to handle a single stereo channel and nothing more.

This is from a pdf I found from Analog Devices Inc.

"Some ICs support multiple I2S data inputs or outputs using a common clock, but this obviously increases the number of pins necessary to transfer the data. Time division multiplexed (TDM) formats are used when more than two channels of data are to be transferred on a single data line. A TDM data stream can carry as many as sixteen channels of data and has a data/clock configuration similar to that of I2S."

I know the cp2114 doesn't have TDM.  it only has I2S, Left Justified, Right Justified and PCM.  You seem well experienced with I2S.  Do you know of an I2S interface that has support for multiple inputs using the same clock?

I need to sample 6 individual strings from an instrument and have all those travel down the USB interface and appear as a six channel audio device.  TDM seems to be the new standard as it's a single channel and can stream many channels with efficiency.

best regards,

Grant