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DRV135: maximum audio transfer distance

Part Number: DRV135
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: DRV134, INA137, OPA1678

Hi

  I am developing a project on audio transmission where it is  required to send audio signals over long distance (30m) long via wires using mobile phone audio output. the audio output is fed to a dc 15V 10w audio amplifier and then to the line driver DRV135. at the receiver end the incoming differential audio signal passes through the INA 137 which is then amplified by the amplifier and gives output to the speakers.

Please help is this the right approach, I am a bit new to the audio transmission. I have used many amplifiers before but not transmitted the signal to large distances.

Regards

Pranav Dosajh

  • Hi Pranav,

    DRV135 should be able to drive a 30m cable. The typical application section (Section 9.2) of the DRV134/DRV135 datasheet shows an example circuit using a DRV134 to drive an INA137 through 500 feet (150 meters) of cable.

    One question I have is the purpose of the first 10W audio amplifier. Do you have something like Phone > (10W amplifier > Speaker / DRV135) > Cable > INA137 > 10W amplifier > speaker? If no speaker is connected on the source end, adding a power amplifier there may be unnecessary.
  • Hi Alex

    Thanks for the input!!!
    No I do not have a speaker o/p at the mobile phone end, so I can reduce the amplifier circuit at the source.
    using the line driver can I connect multiple speaker nodes via single wire (typically mobile phone output) keeping the distance less than 100 m

    i.e
    Phone > DRV135>cable------|--------INA137 > 10W amplifier > speaker
    |--------INA137 > 10W amplifier > speaker
    |--------INA137 > 10W amplifier > speaker

    Is this arrangement possible or any other part is required to get optimum output.
    I will be using CATV cable for audio transmission and nodes can range up to 30-40.

    Regards
    Pranav Dosajh
  • This should be possible. The only concern I would have would be with using coaxial cable for a differential signal. In this case, the shield of your coax would be driven to a voltage, not to ground, which could cause issues if the cable shield is inadvertently shorted to ground. Additionally, you would likely have worse noise immunity than using a shielded cable pair (such as the Belden 8451 recommended in the DRV135 datasheet). Stability of the DRV135 may also be affected by the cable capacitance of such a long coaxial run as well, requiring some isolation resistance between the DRV135 output and the cable input.

    With the coaxial cable, the two signals (+ and -) will not be balanced, and will have different amounts of noise coupling - in other words, the noise will couple differentially, rather than as a common mode signal. At the receiving end, the INA137 will reject much of the common mode noise (up to its CMRR), but any differential mode noise will still be received along with the signal.

    With a shielded twisted pair, the two signals will be more balanced - noise should couple relatively symmetrically into both signals, becoming a common mode signal which then gets attenuated by the INA137's CMRR.

    That being said, if you want to use coaxial cable as your interconnect, as long as your source and receiver do not share another common ground connection (such as through a building ground), simply using the coaxial connection as a single-ended cable may still provide good performance. In that case, you could use an audio op amp (such as the OPA1678) - again with an isolation resistor between its output and the coax for stability - to drive a single-ended signal into the coax.