Thread: Interested in a USB Audio Amplifier?

So, the only extra you are looking for at the moment is a shoehorn eh 2k1?

shoehorn, paper weight, self-defense weapon...

I want to get it working, and working well. Then add things. I see to many people draw up a feature list and cloud the original to the point of producing a crap product with many half assed features.

I am sure I can get more features in there, but for now I need to focus on the basics which are already extremely challenging. There is a reason why only one megamillion (probably mega-billion) corporation has ever done this, it is damned near impossible at this quality and number of channels. Creative's XFI is the only one, and I am not for certain on that. I think they use a custom designed ASIC to accomplish this. (An ASIC costs close to a $1m USD to start producing, but the costs are really low afterwards) The only other solution I have seen is something by "Sonix", but it is a fake. It is only a 24bit stereo solution when acting as a sound card, but it can decode AC3 audio directly into 5.1 at a lower resolution. Interesting what you find when you start looking.

There will be lots of creative engineering in this, and a little bit of fame in the nerdy circles I travel in.

It's quite funny actually, I was only thinking about this problem about 3 days ago, because now that I have upgraded my speakers to aftermarket ones from the original stock ones, I can hear the interference and noise that the basic onboard soundcard generates.

I was tossing up how much I would have to budget for a good quality soundcard, when you posted up about this.

So I at least have a reason to hold on now, but its quite wierd, I was always one of those people who thought 128bit mp3 was fine, until I got the new speakers and everything set up in the car. Now I can actually notice the clipping and odd changes that lower bitrate sound produces, as well as how shoddy the onboard soundcard is.

So believe me, you will get a lot of fame in more than just the nerdy circle, if you can produce this amp. It looks to be a fantastic solution to almost everyone, its cheap enough to be an affordable replacement, but sounds like it will deliver the quality for the midrange audiophiles at least (Those who haven't spent 2-3k on their sound subsystem already!)

Hey Toaster,

Awesome idea. I look forward to seeing the end result.

I know people have asked for different features and it adds to cost, but I was wondering if it would be possible to be able to daisy chain the amps. I run a full active setup for my mids and tweeters. Although I could run them passively with a crossover, I choose not to. Is there any way this could be accomodated.

Are you wanting low side passthroughs so you can connect another amp, or high side so you can power bridge them?

This is a purely digital design. You would need a digital amp to take the signal in, or you would need to do a digital-analogue conversion, then into another amp which will probably do another analogue-digital conversion. That would waste the high resolution. I can provide direct access to the digital low side pretty easily. I guess I could provide extra power stages, but that might come later.

extra power stages would be the go. Maybe you could buy them in pairs, so if you want to run effectively 8.1 you could by just adding another couple of amp modules (2 modules = 4 channels) that way you don't lose any resolution and you could realistically add as many channels as you wish.

Each module is 5 channels, 4 normal and 1 dedicated subwoofer channel. As for the extra stages, I'll see what I can do.

I would deffinately be down for this. I was looking for something like this with speaker level outputs and an RCA level output for a subwoofer.

Sub.

EDIT: Oh yeah, interested too.