Category Archives: Arduino

Dual Mono AK4493 DAC (MK II)

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Time flies when you’re having fun. Or are just too busy with things, in general.

It’s been two and a half years since I posted about my Dual Mono AK4490 DAC. That DAC has been built and is in use by at least 6 people, other than myself. All of them have been very satisfied with its performance.

But since then quite some water has passed under the bridge.

Among other things, the AK4493 chip came out, and it was just that much different than the AK4490 that I had to update my design to accommodate it.

Feature-wise it was pretty enticing. It looked more like a limited performance version of the AK4497 than an upgraded version of the AK4490. So I had to try it out.

Since I was going to update the PCB design, I thought I might as well improve on as much as I could. So, the new board would:

  • Include a new reclocking solution. I went for the best specc’ed chip out there, the famous Potato Semi PO74G374A. One chip would take care of the all of the I2S lines for both DAC chips.
  • Add a couple of external 1.8V DVDD power supplies.
  • Make some optimization of the LT3042 local regulators’ layout, in order to accommodate larger package capacitors (1206) where it would make most sense.
  • Give access to the zero-detect lines of one of the dac chips. These pins could be used to easily implement auto muting of the output stage.
  • Give access to the Enable pin of the Si570/Si544. The use of this Enable pin will be explained later.

In addition I would use the then new Si544 programmable oscillator, offering improved performance over the Si570. This did not require any changes to the pcb.

This is the updated schematic:

(Right click, Save Image As.. to download it in full resolution)

This is the 4-layer PCB:

And this is the BoM (v1.9) in xls format: Dual AK4493 DAC (main board BoM) (17910 downloads )

The finished board looked like this:

The design consideration, powering scheme and clocking considerations remain the same as with the original design. There is not much sense in repeating the same text here. I will make a few notes though, based on the experience gathered from building, testing and listening to several such DACs.

  1. Reclocking is indeed a good idea, offering both measurable improvement in jitter as well as better sound quality.
  2. The pre-regulators that power this board matter. A lot. Especially the ones for AVDDL & AVDDR. We got the best (audible) results by using a couple of paralleled LT3045s.
  3. In a resolving system, any change in anything makes audible differences. I was particularly surprised to hear how much of a difference having correct (and uniform across my devices / stereo components) electrical phase in my power cords made.

Also, having a properly designed and implemented USB to I2S receiver is very important. Early on I realized that it would be best if I designed my own XMOS-based receiver board, custom tailored to my needs. It would also include some light USB line conditioning and an AK4118-based S/PDIF receiver with 4+2 inputs. I would then standardize my DAC designs with this inputs board in mind, including properly supporting it in my Arduino code.

And so this board came to be:

Describing in detail this board is beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say, building it is not for beginners. Plus you will need XMOS’ xTAG programmer to burn firmware into the XMOS chip. If anybody is feeling particularly adventurous, drop me a line and I’ll see if I have any PCBs left.

Now, regarding the Arduino code needed to control this board(s), it is not very different than that used to control the AK4490s. The main differences are:

  • It has been adapted to enable the AK4493s’ PCM/DSD auto detection feature
  • It has support for all of the AK4493’s digital filters
  • It has support for triggering a muting relay
  • It now supports the Si544 instead of the Si570
  • It offers full compatibility with my XMOS / SPDIF board.

There are a number of to-do’s though, such as displaying the bit depth of the incoming PCM signal (from the USB port), plus more information on the incoming DSD stream (such as whether it is in DoP or Native format).

The hardware of the controller is the same that was used with the Dual Mono AK4490 DAC.

In this download I am including the modified versions of the libraries (as mentioned in the above linked post) as well as the necessary font files. Be sure to extract the contents of “Libraries (place in Libraries folder)” to your Arduino IDE’s “libraries” folder.

Download it here: aKduino v3 (63078 downloads )

Regarding the output stage, it is the same design that was used for the AK4490 DAC. However its output level is slightly lower than that of the AK4490 board since the AK4493’s VREF voltage is limited to 5.25V, compared to about 7V of the AK4490. This difference in volume is easy to compensate for by changing a few resistors on the output stage.

Here is a pic of the 3 boards in action:At the time of this writing there have been built 4 DACs based on this updated DAC design PCB.

If anybody is interested in building this DAC drop me a line. I have a few spare boards lying around.

ArDAM Lite custom PCBs for diyaudio.com

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This post serves mainly as a placeholder for the build guide that I wrote for the PCBs, since it seems that some people had problems with the download link that I provided.

The build guide can be downloaded by clicking here: ArDAM Lite Build Guide (69867 downloads )

I do have a few left over PCBs, if you’re interested contact me for more info.

STM32 Microcontrollers & Arduino

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I love Arduinos as much as the next (nerdy) guy, but let’s face it, they are no powerhouses (DUE and ZERO excluded, but they discontinued the former.. go figure..).

The Atmel AVR series is 8-bit and its clock is ridiculously slow by today’s standards.

Sure, you can get it to do some things with impressive speed if you are willing to do some low-level programming but I myself do this as a hobby and thus don’t really want to deal with assembly-level code.

If only there was a fast and cheap microcontroller that was easy to program..

Enter the ST STM32F103C family of microcontrollers.

These little wonders are:

  • Friggin’ fast. 32bit ARM architecture running at 72MHz.
  • Very well equipped in the I/O department.. 2 x UARTs, 2 x SPI busses, 2 x I2C ports, etc.
  • Easy to program using the familiar Arduino IDE, thanks to the work done by the wonderful people at www.stm32duino.com
  • Dirt cheap. You can get an Arduino Nano – sized board for less than 3€ shipped.

It’s pretty easy to get started using these microcontrollers. All you have to do is buy a tiny board from Ebay. You will also need a USB to Serial adapter that works with 3.3V voltage levels (you probably already have one of those lying around already..).

These tiny boards are known as “Blue Pills” or “Red Pills”, according to the colour of the PCB. There are other variations as well, but the red and blue variants are the most commonplace. They have relatively minor differences.

This is the pinout for either one of them:

To get started, you have to connect your USB to serial port adapter to the STM32’s RX1, TX1 and GND pins. RX from USB adapter goes to TX1 (PA9 pin) and TX goes to RX1 (PA10 pin).

To make the Arduino IDE compatible with these boards, you have to download the necessary files from here: https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/Arduino_STM32

You then unzip the libary to C:\users\\Documents\Arduino\hardware\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\

At the time of this posting, IDE 1.8.0 (latest available edition) is properly supported. You will also need to install support for the Arduino DUE or ZERO from the Boards Manager, otherwise you will get a “/bin/arm-none-eabi-g++: no such file or directory” error.

If everything went fine, you should see in your IDE a number of new available boards:

You select “Generic STM32F103C series”, the 128k variant, 72MHz speed, and Serial upload method:

You are now ready to try your first code upload.

The classic test is the Blink sketch:


// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin PC13 as an output.
pinMode(PC13, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(PC13, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(PC13, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000); // wait for a second
}

In case of the STM32 uCs, the only necessary modification is changing the pin number of the LED to one compatible with the Blue (or Red) Pill (PC13).

Pin numbers for this family of uCs are not just numbers like they are for the Arduino boards (like 1,2,3….,A1,A2,…) but are named as they are described in the uC’s datasheet (PC13, PC14, etc.).

The procedure for uploading code is a little different than the one for the Arduinos. The STM32s come with 2 built-in bootloaders. One of them boots from system memory and the other from program memory. These different bootloaders are selected by changing the position of the BOOT0 jumper. You set it to 1 to boot from system memory or to 0 to boot from program memory.

To upload our code, we do the following:

  1. Set ‘BOOT0‘ to 1. This way we will boot from system memory which contains a UART to flash uploader.
  2. Press the RESET button.
  3. In the Arduino IDE, choose ‘Upload‘. On the board, the blue LED will start to flash.

After the upload is completed, our sketch will start. We should see the blinking LED.

If we want our uploaded sketch to boot automatically after the next power-on/reset, we need to set ‘BOOT0‘ back to 0 (so that on next powerup we will boot from program memory).

That’s pretty much it. Your next step should be to go to STM32duino’s forum and check out the libraries that have already been ported to the STM32duino environment.

Troubleshooting

If your sketch fails to compile, giving you a “/bin/arm-none-eabi-g++: no such file or directory” error, make sure that you have installed support for the Arduino DUE or ZERO from the Boards Manager.

If you get an error on the IDE that it “Failed to erase memory”, that means that your STM32 chip is locked. No worries, all you have to do is go here and get ST’s Flash Loader Demonstrator utility. It will unlock the chip with minimum effort. Be sure to run it as Administrator in Windows.

st_flash_loader_demonstrator_1

st_flash_loader_demonstrator_2

Blue Pill reference: http://wiki.stm32duino.com/index.php?title=Blue_Pill

Controlling an AK4490 DAC with an Arduino

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These days I’m co-developing an AK4490 based DAC. The aim is to end up with a no-compromise dual mono design, one that would perform at the very least on par with my Buffalo III.

Of course, to do that one has to run the 4490s in software mode.

As a matter of fact, it is generally preferred to run a 4490 in software versus hardware mode, for several reasons.

To begin with, in software mode the 4490 supports DSD decoding. It goes as far as to support a “Volume Bypass” feature which bypasses most of the processing done on the DSD signal (a.k.a. “the ΔΣ modulator”), resulting in more pure sound. But of course we do lose the ability to do volume control in software.

Software mode also allows us to try out all of the supported SQ features, like the different “Sound Setting” modes.

At last but not least, we get digital hardware volume control.

This is the prototype that we designed, getting I2S input from an Amanero and being controlled by my custom STM32 controller (more on that in the near future).

I searched the Net for any ready-made code that would control the 4490, but I couldn’t find anything worthwhile, so I began virtually from scratch.

So, my Arduino code (a.k.a. “aKduino”) enables:

  • Controlling an AK4490 through the I2C bus.
  • Automatic switching between PCM and DSD. It does rely on getting a “DSD type signal” from our USB-to-I2S interface of choice. The 4490 by itself is not capable of determining whether its input is PCM or DSD.
  • Setting the volume (in 9 steps.. just to confirm that volume control does indeed work).
  • Selecting “Volume Bypass” for direct DSD processing.
  • Selecting the internal DSD filter’s cutoff frequency (50KHz or 150KHz).
  • Selecting one of the 4 available PCM filters.
  • Enabling or disabling the Super Slow filter.
  • Selecting one of the 3 available “Sound Quality” settings.
  • Displaying all of the registers’ settings (for troubleshooting purposes).

Software Requirements:

  • Nothing (for now)

Basic Hardware Requirements:

  • Any Arduino (*)

(*) I should note here that the AK4490’s datasheet states that all of its I/O pins are expecting 3.3V logic levels but there has been a large number of reported cases of 5V Arduinos working without problems. I’m too much of a coward to try that myself so I used level converters for my initial testing and eventually a custom STM32 board that uses 3.3V logic but you may want to try your luck with 5V logic levels. Just don’t blame me if your 4490 gets damaged in the process.

Currently the code is at v1.35: aKduino Code (146676 downloads )

Here is the revision history:

v1.35 20/12/2016:

  • Code cleanup for first public release.

v1.33 19/12/2016:

  • Added full control of sound parameters through serial port.

v1.27 18/12/2016:

  • First functional version.
  • Automatic switching between PCM and DSD by monitoring DSDPIN.

Fixing startup issues with Arduino DUEs

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If you’ve had a lot of Arduino DUEs go through your hands (or if you are just unlucky), chances are you’ve come across at least one that does not start-up properly.

The symptom is simple: you power up the Arduino but it doesn’t appear to “boot”. Your code simply doesn’t start running.

You might have noticed that resetting the board (by pressing the reset button) causes the board to start-up normally.

I had come across such a board a while back, and had thought to myself “cheap generic, probably faulty” and had just put it aside. At ~13€ it was no big loss.

A few days ago a fellow tinkerer (thank you Alex!) alerted me to a fix for this problem.

It appears that the problem was first spotted on Freetronics’ forum and was dealt with swiftly.

The problem occurs only on some DUE boards and is due to some undocumented behaviour of the ATSAM3X8E processor combined with the behaviour of some MOSFETS installed on the DUE boards. So its occurence is largely a matter of luck.

The fix is simple: you just solder a 10K resistor across the top of this mosfet:

DUE-Fix-culprit

This is a 10K 0805 resistor that is about to be soldered:

DUE-Fix-1

..and after soldering:

DUE-Fix-2

The discovery of the problem prompted a new revision of the reference design by the Arduino team.

This is what the Rev 2’s relevant part of the schematic looks like:

Arduino_DUE_Rev.2_sch

and the PCB:

Arduino_DUE_Rev.2

And this is what Rev 3 looks like:

Arduino_DUE_Rev.3_sch

Arduino_DUE_Rev.3

You will notice a new component, R99, plus the mosfet is now mounted vertically.

So, if you are shopping for a DUE, look for one with this mosfet mounted vertically, just to be on the safe side.

Universal Signal Isolator Shield: Rev. 1.2

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Since there has been a lot of interest in my Isolator shield these past few months, I have been optimizing its design.

The result of this optimization is this PCB:
Rev.-1.2-pic
It’s called “the Rev. 1.2”.

Nothing major has changed. The pinouts are still the same, the major components are the same, the functionality is essentially the same.

The changes are as follows:

  • New SPI header. It just passes through the SPI signals, nothing more. It does not connect to anything on the board.
  • New SPI_CS header. Useful only if / when connecting SPI peripherals.
  • Reset button. Because you never know..
  • New circuitry for the POWER_RELAY header. It now uses a MOSFET and it includes a diode for the reverse current coming back from the relay’s coil.
  • Decoupling cap for the IR receiver. Not absolutely necessary, but good to have.
  • More decoupling for the DC_UNR input.
  • Ground planes. Lower Arduino noise, at least in theory.

Here is the updated parts placement:
USI-parts-placement-rev1.2

And this is the updated BoM:

[table “” not found /]

Soon I will update the shield’s page with the new info.

They’re here!

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I’m talking about my new Universal Signal Isolator PCBs:

USI_bare_slanted USIs_bunch

IMG_0320_res

I built one to test it out and everything seems to be working as it should. Next step is a page for the project, with schematics, a BoM and build instructions.

It is compatible with the current versions of both the ArDAM1021 and TFT HiFiDuino projects.

For now you can find more info in this post.