Any Amp with I2S inputs?

[DEF]

Why not? What benefit to you expect I2S to bring compared to SPDIF, Toslink, or HDMI?

I was told Toslink/S/PDIF does go to 192kHz only. All above needs I2S.
Or even multichannel - more than stereo.

 

[TimW]

oh, very nice, thats what i was looking for, thanks!

There is also this one with a bit more power and worse distortion characteristics:

WONDOM OFFICIAL SHOP - Amplifier Board - Sure Electronics - ADAU1701 - 18650 charger - Sigmastudio

Sure Electronics is a professional audio amplifier supplier that provides electronics hobbyists and business partners the middleware which can help reduce customers' development difficulties and save their precious time-to-market by making the products directly released in the market.

store.sure-electronics.com

Neither is really great as far as power amplifiers go but they do have some cool features built in.

TAS5754M

TAS5768M

 

[antcollinet]

I was told Toslink/S/PDIF does go to 192kHz only. All above needs I2S.
Or even multichannel - more than stereo.

Even so - you don't need 192kHz unless you are a bat**, and certainly not higher. HDMI can deliver multi channel - and is the de facto standard multi channel interface, which is why AVRs use HDMI rather than I2S. If you want higher than 192, despite its utter pointlessness, there is USB.

**In fact anything higher than 24/48kHz is inaudible, and mainly delivers ultrasonic noise.

 

[cobby]

May I ask what your source for the I2S data stream is?

xmos xu208 is a option, as a ESP32 may would be, while a xmos is way better for sure.

 

[DEF]

Even so - you don't need 192kHz unless you are a bat**, and certainly not higher. HDMI can deliver multi channel - and is the de facto standard multi channel interface, which is why AVRs use HDMI rather than I2S. If you want higher than 192, despite its utter pointlessness, there is USB.

**In fact anything higher than 24/48kHz is inaudible, and mainly delivers ultrasonic noise.

The benefit of using 768kHz are tighter timings.
192 kHz at lower sample rate gives me 1ms less latency according to my measurements, compared to the standard 48kHz 64

 

[BDWoody]

I was told Toslink/S/PDIF does go to 192kHz only. All above needs I2S.
Or even multichannel - more than stereo.

192kHz sample rate will give you a frequency response up to 96kHz. It won't re-create any of the lower frequencies more accurately, it just makes your band limit higher. That isn't intuitive, so if you want to make sense of that, check out the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.

 

[cobby]

It isn't, because it was never intended as an external interface. It is designed as a chip to chip interface. Other interfaces - as mentioned are specified and suitable for external component interfaces. Just choose a device which uses those.

am aware of that its ment to be used onboard, but not my concern here.
i can go optical spdif or lvds and convert to i2s on demand, or i can probably also make i2s work on longer cable runs as i did with i2c.
really not my concern atm.
i have no definitve thing in mind, i am just looking around.
as there are not even speakers yet for it, which would be DIY anyway, i would have the freedom to connect them over simple speakers wires to bridge any lengh i need.

to what i see there are class d chipsets with analog input and some with i2s, none is using spdif or hdmi natively as far i know.
spdif have its stereo limitation, hdmi is very complicated to use, so I2S it is.

 

[cobby]

I was told Toslink/S/PDIF does go to 192kHz only. All above needs I2S.
Or even multichannel - more than stereo.

in this case i would need the 4ch of I2S.

 

[cobby]

There is also this one with a bit more power and worse distortion characteristics:

WONDOM OFFICIAL SHOP - Amplifier Board - Sure Electronics - ADAU1701 - 18650 charger - Sigmastudio

Sure Electronics is a professional audio amplifier supplier that provides electronics hobbyists and business partners the middleware which can help reduce customers' development difficulties and save their precious time-to-market by making the products directly released in the market.

store.sure-electronics.com

Neither is really great as far as power amplifiers go but they do have some cool features built in.

TAS5754M
View attachment 396629

TAS5768M
View attachment 396630

youre spot on, both arent really high end amps but offer nice features might worth to be tried.
for sure good test units, not sure if they will drive a woofer well, they may can be bridged, idk.
prob its freq. is also a bit load dependend, but they offer both i2s.

Bit strange that the later one is advertised not needing a master clock, this is what i would look most for using it as active crossover fed by the xmos master clock.

 

[cobby]

Well, if such amps exist, it would be an easy cool way to have multichannel (out of the gpio pins of a rpi5 for instance) without the need for a multichannel DAC.

not using a raspi atm, but thats basically the idea.
am eying a xmos xu208 as i2s master connected by usb to a linux mini pc for this purpose.

 

[Roland68]

xmos xu208 is a option, as a ESP32 may would be, while a xmos is way better for sure.

Is it possible that you don't have a very good understanding of I2S?
XU208 and ESP32 are not sources and are rather poor options today, just like TAS5754M and TAS5768M.
I2C and I2S have nothing to do with each other and your experience with I2C is not applicable to I2S or I2S over LVDS. LVDS is not designed for cable lengths over 2m, and even if 3-5m can work, you will lose data. That has nothing to do with I2S, and SPDIF, and also AES, are clearly superior in this regard.

In order to get to a sound range with I2S where it is at least not worse than the usual solutions, you would first have to have a source with I2S that gives you a clean and as jitter-free as possible signal. Let me know if you have something like that.

Anything you can put together with XU208, I2S and one of the AMPs with I2S will always be significantly inferior, e.g. a Fosi V3 stereo amp and a cheap and well-tested DAC SMSL SU-1 for a total of 140 €/$ (without power supply for the V3). Incidentally, regardless of whether the DAC runs via USB or SPDIF.

I2S over LVDS does not need to be tested either, tens of thousands have already done that and as long as you pay attention to the pin assignments there are no problems. And LVDS has been tested for 25 years anyway and is one of the most used and successful protocols in the world.
There is nothing magical about it and it offers no advantages for audio, quite the opposite. You would have to spend a lot of money to even come close to the SMSL SU-1 DAC for 79 - 85 €.

 

[cobby]

Is it possible that you don't have a very good understanding of I2S?
XU208 and ESP32 are not sources and are rather poor options today, just like TAS5754M and TAS5768M.
I2C and I2S have nothing to do with each other and your experience with I2C is not applicable to I2S or I2S over LVDS. LVDS is not designed for cable lengths over 2m, and even if 3-5m can work, you will lose data. That has nothing to do with I2S, and SPDIF, and also AES, are clearly superior in this regard.

In order to get to a sound range with I2S where it is at least not worse than the usual solutions, you would first have to have a source with I2S that gives you a clean and as jitter-free as possible signal. Let me know if you have something like that.

Anything you can put together with XU208, I2S and one of the AMPs with I2S will always be significantly inferior, e.g. a Fosi V3 stereo amp and a cheap and well-tested DAC SMSL SU-1 for a total of 140 €/$ (without power supply for the V3). Incidentally, regardless of whether the DAC runs via USB or SPDIF.

I2S over LVDS does not need to be tested either, tens of thousands have already done that and as long as you pay attention to the pin assignments there are no problems. And LVDS has been tested for 25 years anyway and is one of the most used and successful protocols in the world.
There is nothing magical about it and it offers no advantages for audio, quite the opposite. You would have to spend a lot of money to even come close to the SMSL SU-1 DAC for 79 - 85 €.

i never said that i do understand i2s very well yet, in first i was just lookig for options to investigate further.
am also aware that i2c and i2s arent directly related, i just wanted to point out there are ways to make it work.
as you say, nothing too special done decades back allready.
dont wanted to "test" anything new? where i wrote that?
also, i never intended to send i2s over long cable runs, no point brought up by me either.

i was under the impression that the xu208 is a propper i2s source, if its not then, yea, then its not good.
its a way to route 4 channels from a linux system at least, but of course all this news isnt very encouraging.
the problem using a smsl dac is that i cant clock sync them using simply 2 of them, i can make it kinda work with pipewire but just kind of, i was looking for some cleaner solution using the xu208 master clock.
i havent found many pricewise acceptable 4ch dacs.

Would a Combo384 USB to I2S plus 2 ES9018 in to some amps be a better idea?

 

[cobby]

There is also this one with a bit more power and worse distortion characteristics:

WONDOM OFFICIAL SHOP - Amplifier Board - Sure Electronics - ADAU1701 - 18650 charger - Sigmastudio

Sure Electronics is a professional audio amplifier supplier that provides electronics hobbyists and business partners the middleware which can help reduce customers' development difficulties and save their precious time-to-market by making the products directly released in the market.

store.sure-electronics.com

Neither is really great as far as power amplifiers go but they do have some cool features built in.

TAS5754M
View attachment 396629

TAS5768M
View attachment 396630

their JAB5 https://store.sure-electronics.com/product/756 fits the bill also with its i2s inputs.
nice tinker store.

 

[DEF]

their JAB5 https://store.sure-electronics.com/product/756 fits the bill also with its i2s inputs.
nice tinker store.

but now u got fan noise

 

[cobby]

but now u got fan noise

true, one may could hope its not running on low amps, but idk.
at least thats a thing one can improve, better fan, better cooler etc.
if its worth idk.
the onboard DSP is quite capable but the amp/dac itself is probably only mediocre.
this way one can also use spdif as input, as all the amps are behind the dsp, handy.

 

[antcollinet]

the problem using a smsl dac is that i cant clock sync them using simply 2 of them,

Well you can if you send to them using SPDF or Toslink. As long as both inputs are derived from the same clock, then the two DACs will also be synchronised.

 

[Roland68]

i never said that i do understand i2s very well yet, in first i was just lookig for options to investigate further.
am also aware that i2c and i2s arent directly related, i just wanted to point out there are ways to make it work.
as you say, nothing too special done decades back allready.
dont wanted to "test" anything new? where i wrote that?
also, i never intended to send i2s over long cable runs, no point brought up by me either.

i was under the impression that the xu208 is a propper i2s source, if its not then, yea, then its not good.
its a way to route 4 channels from a linux system at least, but of course all this news isnt very encouraging.
the problem using a smsl dac is that i cant clock sync them using simply 2 of them, i can make it kinda work with pipewire but just kind of, i was looking for some cleaner solution using the xu208 master clock.
i havent found many pricewise acceptable 4ch dacs.

Would a Combo384 USB to I2S plus 2 ES9018 in to some amps be a better idea?

You are making the mistake of not providing us with the necessary information here, including the actual problem you want to solve, as well as the budget available.
There is also no information about your requirements in terms of specification/sound.

- The available XU208 boards from the DIY sector are not particularly well/well developed, but they usually work. The SMSL PO100 PRO is affordable and has I2S over LVDS, SPDIF and optical out. Alternatively, the solutions from Xing Audio are recommended, as is the older Xingser board. After that it gets expensive.
- Make sure that I2S and I2S over LVDS are not compatible and must be converted. I2S maximum 10-15cm.
- Almost all amplifiers, including the ones you suggested, simply have a simple DSP chip like the ADAU1701 connected in front.
- You can get the ADAU1701 as a board or external module from Wodom, so you can use it to run any amplifier, even 4 channels or more. Also look out for all the expansion modules at Wodom under Audio Signal Processor and Audio Signal Transceiver. You will also find many tutorials for the products.
In general, you are in good hands at Wodom in the cheaper range, after that it gets more complex and/or more expensive

 

[cobby]

Well you can if you send to them using SPDF or Toslink. As long as both inputs are derived from the same clock, then the two DACs will also be synchronised.

true, but then i need to find a device who let me send 2 seperate streams (4ch) over probably 2 seperate (?) spdif/toslink outs if not using the ADAU1701 who distribute the 2ch to 4ch internally so the SPDIF 2 channels are no problem.

 

[Roland68]

true, but then i need to find a device who let me send 2 seperate streams (4ch) over probably 2 seperate (?) spdif/toslink outs if not using the ADAU1701 who distribute the 2ch to 4ch internally so the SPDIF 2 channels are no problem.

You are still not telling us the necessary details about your goal/problem, so we can only guess, which is quite annoying and wastes our time and you may miss a much better solution.
What is the initial situation, where do you want to go, what is the source and which devices/speakers are involved?

 

[cobby]

You are making the mistake of not providing us with the necessary information here, including the actual problem you want to solve, as well as the budget available.
There is also no information about your requirements in terms of specification/sound.

- The available XU208 boards from the DIY sector are not particularly well/well developed, but they usually work. The SMSL PO100 PRO is affordable and has I2S over LVDS, SPDIF and optical out. Alternatively, the solutions from Xing Audio are recommended, as is the older Xingser board. After that it gets expensive.
- Make sure that I2S and I2S over LVDS are not compatible and must be converted. I2S maximum 10-15cm.
- Almost all amplifiers, including the ones you suggested, simply have a simple DSP chip like the ADAU1701 connected in front.
- You can get the ADAU1701 as a board or external module from Wodom, so you can use it to run any amplifier, even 4 channels or more. Also look out for all the expansion modules at Wodom under Audio Signal Processor and Audio Signal Transceiver. You will also find many tutorials for the products.
In general, you are in good hands at Wodom in the cheaper range, after that it gets more complex and/or more expensive

in first i was mostly curious about learning more over digital input amps, i havent found much so thats why i asked and the wondom amps seems to be a good find.
i basically like to get a overview of whats on the market, premade, diy, high price, low price.

there is no speicific problem i have to solve but the active crossover/biamping possibility is tempting.
friend of mine want to build some speakers as a fun project and i might talk him in to the wondom route as i think he will enjoy it (of course the speakers for this project need to be found too but thats not the topic here).
In short, i am atm fascinated by active DSP crossovers.

Thanks for the SMSL PO100 PRO tip, thats some really speacial unit, i wasnt aware that it offers I2S (their lineup is a bit confusing).
That product seems to have a very good performance/price ratio.

there would be no long cable runs needed for i2s, streamer, amp etc placed right next to each other, can be even one case, np.
if we stick to the 4ch biamping active dsp crossover concept, i think there are roughly these options so far.
-
-wondom digital input amps based on the TAS57XX chipsets with their internal DAC.
a f.e. a smsl 100, or maybe a toslink to i2s converter, feeding 2 of these amps using the TI smartamp features for crossover etc.

-wondom jab5, who have the ADAU1701 in front of its amps who are fed by the 4 DAC of the ADAU.
this seems to be the simplest solution, the split in to 4ch is in done in this one DSP.

so its a bit sigmastudio vs ti´s smarteq and comparing the technical specs ( will list some and post later).
there is a ton chipsets from ti having smartamp features and digital inputs.