Designing a simple I2S to USB audio capture board

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subbu@e2
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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2020 11:04 pm

Designing a simple I2S to USB audio capture board

Post by subbu@e2 »

Hello All,

I am new to XMOS and would like to design a simple I2S to USB audio capture device. The goal is to record the data from I2S (PCM/DSD) using audacity or other software. This is will be part of an Audio A to D main board with USB interface.

I would like to get some information on which eval board should I use and can any of the USB to I2S boards available in the market using XMOS processor reprogrammed for this purpose?

Regards,
Subbu


pastaclub
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Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:10 pm

Post by pastaclub »

Did you get ahead with this?

I have similar plans: I am generating I2S streams with an FPGA and I'm looking for a way to make them available via UAC2. I think that the XU208 could do the job. But the situation with development boards looks pretty desperate. There seems to be no development board available for the current XU parts at all. There is a multi-channel audio board, but it uses an external PHY.

Not having worked with XMOS before, it feels a bit too much to have to make my own PCB before I can even try anything :(
subbu@e2
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Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2020 11:04 pm

Post by subbu@e2 »

No I haven't got any response. I was about to give up and I got the MCHStreamer from minidsp.com but been having clock issues. So started reading again and let me see where it goes.
pastaclub
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Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:10 pm

Post by pastaclub »

Meanwhile I got that multi-channel audio board. I have to correct one thing about my previous post. The board does NOT use an external PHY - the XE chips also have USB on board. I was not aware of that because the XU chips are advertised as having USB and the XE chips are not. It's not even mentioned in their description, so I didn't look at them further initially.

The Mac version of the tools obviously was neglected for years. It took me quite some time to make xTime Composer work under MacOS Catalina since it's not compatible with MacOS's gatekeeper and you have to manually authorize tons of executables and modules across various folders. By now I can edit and compile, but not flash. This seems to be a Mac-specific problem that has existed for years. I guess I will have to install the tools under Windows.

I have been reading the programming guide and the documentation of some libraries and I have to credit XMOS that those are quite well written and don't leave many questions open.

Let us know how you are getting ahead.
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akp
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:47 pm

Post by akp »

Linux tools are good, too. Compiles much faster than Windows because it can compile with multiple threads. But you do have to be careful about a few settings to get it to run properly, if you search Ubuntu or Linux on the forum you'll get sorted. I don't know anything about the MacOS tools.
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