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Digital surround sound input to multiple analog stereo outputs

Other Parts Discussed in Thread: TPA3244

I am trying to find out whether TI manufactures any ICs that will take input of a 5.1 or 7.1 digital (S/PDIF) audio signal and converts it to multiple stereo outputs (or for each channel in the surround sound format). Does something like this exist or are there potentially two chips that would work well together to achieve this? Thanks

  • Hi Alex,

    SPDIF is by definition stereo audio as it has 2 channels available in its communication. The way to get to more than 2 channels is to use a compression scheme on both the generation of the audio, and the receiving of the audio. These compression functions are usually licensed such as Dolby Digital. TI does not have any dedicated SPDIF ICs that can decode any of these multi channel compression streams into PCM audio, only the I2S form of the 2 channel compressed data. This means that with any TI SPDIF IC you will still need to decode the 2 channel compressed audio information into the separate channels, which would usually be a DSP of some sort.

    Justin
  • Thanks Justin, that is super helpful feedback! It looks like TI at one point sold the Aureus TMS320DA708 but most of the links I can find appear to be broken. Any idea whether that product is still sold or if there is a newer equivalent?

    www.ti.com/.../sprt372.pdf

  • Hi Alex,

    I don't believe that is recommended for new designs. We have recently worked with our Catalog processor team on a Dolby Atmos Sound Bar reference design that we will be releasing soon that uses a 66AK2GXX family device and TPA3244 Class D amplifiers. This device can handle the number of channels and run any licensed decode software.

    Have you looked at the amplifiers for driving these analog outputs? We have a new high performance class D family of amplifiers called TPA32XX. This family can reach up to 600W from a single device. Let me know if you have any questions.

    Justin