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Cheap SBlive ADC for 4 inputs!


uclaros

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Hi all!

I'm sure there are some other people here with a cheap sblive on their machines!...

After using the KX drivers (http://www.kxproject.com/), I realized this card is more than it seems to be!..

Except the fact that I can get latencies about 5.33 ms, the card has 2 unused stereo inputs!

So, I found a schematic of a simple ADC that enables u to use those four mono inputs!

For anyone interested,

http://alive.singnet.com.sg/musician/aps-rewiring/

Hope that someone else finds this interesting except me!

Bye!

Uclaros.

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If u search the KX driver site and the APS driver site , you'll find drivers for linux. (I 'm sure I saw them somewhere but don't remember their name...)

I'll try to design a board for the circuit.. If i've gor something, I'll post it here!

PS. With this, you'll have 4 individual inputs (mono) , and not like the mic in/cd/aux/line in , that are in fact the same input! I believe that they can record simultaneously!

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huummm I think if they use 4 different ADC, they can be record at the same time... but the driver have to handle this! If you want some help with the board... tell me!

But I look at it again and it's a great mod!  ;)

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The circuit uses 2 adc from crystal, cs5331 but those are stereo! The drivers handle those inputs not as 2 stereo but as 4 mono ASIO inputs. In Cubase, u can select any of them as VST inputs!!

As for the board, I'm not experienced, I've made a couple of boards using Eagle software..Are u more experienced in designing PCB?

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yes 4 mono ;D I going too look for linux driver (alsa if possible). And I will looking for a sblive (my sister does have one in her computer..... ;D)

I'm not very experiment with PCB designing, but the schematic is not very complicated, so I think it's easy to make a board. If you want I can check yours, but I don't think I can make it better than you ;)

As I see this mod... this make think building a complete ADC/ADAT would not be very difficult...???

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Wow!! this looks like a very cool, and educational site! I spent ages looking on the net for hacks like this, and never found them till now! Thanks uclaros!

BTW I once tried hooking up 2 sblives and one sb vibra 128, using cubase sx, to get 6 analogue I/O, it found all the inputs, but would only record on one stereo pair at a time... (But all outputs worked at the same time, which was interesting!!... a cheap way to do outboard processing on your favorite outboard gear ;D)

I currently use 2 sblives purely for the midi interfaces!

Does anyone know of a hack to get a sblive working on a mac? There is a mac version out there, but apparently The PC version (cheaper) won't work on a mac. (I tried it anyway, without success!) And the driver download for the mac version says not to try to use the mac drivers with a pc sblive.

will be checking out this site properly soon!  ;D

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oh yeah... look on diyaudio.com, to see if anyone has already designed a diy adat interface... (would be very cool !) another option... see if you can get an old adat tape machine, with a busted mechanism, or stuffed heads... I believe it is possible to use such a device to interface adat to analogue devices.

good luck, from Steve

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I ordered 3xcs5331 from crystal as free samples but I'm not sure they're going to ship them to me (no reply from them yet..)

I'm going to start designing-building the circuit next month since I'm leaving for vacation and an exercise for the university on a nice island called Tilos. I'll be back in about a month...  ;D

As for the SBlive it's very cheap now since the market is filled with audigy and audigy 2!

Have a nice summer and visit a greek island!!!  ;D

Uclaros

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yes, SB live is cheap... mayebe is there a way to use the same clock for 2 sblive... this we can have 8 channels ;D

I think I'm going to order sample too ;) I think you can use other I2S ADC with no problem!

;)

/edit

And if I can order sample of Alesis AL1401 and AL1402 adat chip's, we can add an ADAT input (and output... ;D)

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Hey Guys...

Sound's interesting...! ;)

I had a similar idea a while bak, but minus the sblive ;). Just like a 8 (or 16 ;p) chan AD box with 1/2x ADAT SMUX outputs..

Got stuck on the clock sh*t tho, any ideas?

Peace...

Dan

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Here's the solution :

A SB Live with EMU10k1 : KX are able to handle 16 independant input!!!!!!!! So, I think 8 can be great... With just one card! I'm going to buy one in the next day, I order a couple of CS5331, and will try that! It seems to be easy to made...! ;)

Wish me luck!!!!!! :)

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will the frequency be stuck at 48khz tho still, as I thought it was with these cards? Could we go from the cirrus a/d straight into an alesis optogen for adat then ye - using the clock source from the 10k1?

Nice if so :)

Keep us posted Pilo!!

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Are you reading my mind? ;)

for the frequency... I don't know! Maybe higher??

FOr the adat ;D Well... I think it's possible, as the AL1402 ahve an ADAT input and I2S output, it will be possible to plug directly an ADAT on the EMU-10k1, this is the aim of "my project"... And then an AL1401 which takes as input the CS ADC (I2S) and output ADAT! And we have a complete ADAT (cheap!) sound card...

I wish Cirrus send me the sample, and I wish htrp://www.alesis-semi.com to be online soon too se if I can order AL140X!!!

I'm so Exited I can't wait!!!!! ;D

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Thats 23 similles on this thread now!

I have 2 x AL1101 and 2 x 1401 ready already :)

Bring forth the cirruss'...!!!

Wow I'm spinning out, I didn't know alesis made a chip available to process ADAT... I was going to buy an analog to ADAT convertor shortly, but if there's a DIY solution, I'd love to hear more...

Cheers guys

PS Are we too far off topic here?

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Hey Stryd...

FYI, datasheets for the AL1101(ADC) and AL1401(ADAT encoder) chips...:

http://notapplicable.co.uk/mbhp/al1101.pdf

http://notapplicable.co.uk/mbhp/al1401.pdf

The Cirrus site has info's too...

I originally just thought of an ext 8/16 chan a/d box with smux capability - but know i'm wondering if we could use multiple hacked live's in say an ol pc runnin a linux hd recording program, like http://ardour.sourceforge.net/ or summin...

who knows....???

It's all to much to keep up wiv!! ;)

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Ardour??? It's what I want to use too!!!! ;D

The problem is that the alsa driver of the live will have to be upgraded to use the new input and output!

will you guys ever have time to make any music??

Well... no!!! lol But I play in a band so we are on holydays now... :D

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  • 3 weeks later...

hi

im using the sblive with kx drivers since about 1 year and they are damn good !!

i simply get two cheap sblive4.1 (analog in -> digital out-spdif) and use them as a/d interfaces and i can record 6

mono or 3 stereo at one time    ;D

but 6 are not enough ! i want to get use of the other inputs - i´ve got the hoontech digi add on card 4 the sblive and its got an AES/EBU free for input !!

anyone got an idea how to build a cheap analog to AES/EBU interface ?? would be really really 8)

yeehaa

cant belive to read about this topic in my favority forum

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

best forum on earth

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hehe I think I'm going to recieve my SBLive soon.

But it seems that cirrus doesn't want to send me any sampe of their I2S ADC, and I don't even know where to buy them grrrrrrrr!!!

But I think I'm going to search for other!

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NEED HELP! lol

I've just received my SB live, install KX driver under windows and woouuaaahh! 16 inputs under NTRACK with asio!!!! I WANT ALL OF THESE!!! well I have to build I2S interfae first... and maybe spdif... if someone else is using kx driver, can he explain me how the input is used? I mean which SPDIF in correspond to which input ect...

THANKS!

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Hi pilo!

The fun with the KX drivers (except te 16 asio inputs) i sthat you can route the signals in anyway ou want on the KX-DSP window!

The two main devices there are the prologue and the epilogue.

Prologue is all the inputs and epilogue all the outputs!

On the epilogue there are the outputs of your soundcard (front, rear, sub etc) and also the "virtual outputs" asio 0 to asio 15 that can be used as inputs on any audio software! So you can just route the CD SPDIF to any asio you want to record!

If you read the KS documentation you may understand it better! I found it very helpfull!

I asked for a cirrus sample too but had no reply too...

If you have any news from cirrus let me know!

Thanks, Uclaros

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