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Review and Measurements of WesionTEK Khadas Tone Board DAC

Nybto

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I received my tone board the other day. Playback has been without problems and I’ve played PCM up to 384 and DSD native and DoP up to 256. However when playing DSD the channels are reversed. I have duplicated this using roon playing via multiple devices, micorendu, sotm, and windows 10. All forms of DSD from native DSD formatted files to upconverted PCM to DSD files play with the channels reversed. Hopefully they will fix with a firmware upgrade in the near future.
Well spotted! Meantime I am failing to get DSD into it via DoP using the Spdif input. DSD files play when using the USB. (I don’t want to use the USB permanently because I use the USB connection for power only to enable control by a 12v trigger). Anyone successfully using DSD over DoP via the spdif?
 

graz_lag

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Well spotted! Meantime I am failing to get DSD into it via DoP using the Spdif input. DSD files play when using the USB. (I don’t want to use the USB permanently because I use the USB connection for power only to enable control by a 12v trigger). Anyone successfully using DSD over DoP via the spdif?

DSD ---> DoP is limited to DSD64 thru SPDIF ...
 

graz_lag

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Are you saying that DSD 64 works via spdif on your Tone Board?

That's the limit of the technology, so it cannot work if you have been trying with higher formats than DSD64.
There are a couple of bloggers in here from Khadas, you may want to address your questions to them, they're very much responsive.
 
Last edited:

Nybto

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Well thank you for the advice, it’s just that seeing several comments from people using DSD files, I wanted to ask if any of them had done this using the spdif input.

If there is any way I could get that working (DSD64), I would be very happy! (It worked fine over spdif with my previous DAC, the Benchmark DAC2).
 

drewfIr

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Hello,

Would like to thank amirm for the review and everyone's comments.

From what have read here it seems that updating the firmware on the Tone
Board, can only be done in a Windows machine. Is this correct? Would
like to update the firmware once the Tone Board arrives. So can adjust
the volume in Linux using alasmixer.

Thank You
 

Silou

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Are there any problems using the VIM-Edition as a normal DAC? The Generic-Edition is not available at the moment.
 

ascorbyl

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Are there any problems using the VIM-Edition as a normal DAC? The Generic-Edition is not available at the moment.
I believe the only difference is that the VIMs edition has the GPIO header pre-soldered.
 

Transpareo

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EDIT: The culprit for slow windows audio service initiation and constant "device connected sound" at startup was my external hdd enclosure. It doesn't jive well with the new UEFI boot method, I guess, or with win 10 1809 version. In any case, it's not the toneboard.
 
Last edited:

somebodyelse

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'Not possible' is a bit premature. Updating from linux is not supported, and I suspect not even tried. There is example code from XMOS that apparently compiles after a single line change, and will probably work as I doubt Khadas have changed the DFU part of the XMOS sample code. XMOS have just sorted the problem I had creating an account on their site, so I'll see what I can do.
 

Roen

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And DSD over DoP for the spdif input, @Ben1987 ? (please!)
I don't think DoDoP (sorry, I just had to since you doubled an acronym) work over SPDIF, if someone can confirm.

DSD over PCM usually takes around twice the bandwidth as native DSD due to implementation, so if Native DSD has a limit of DSD64 over SPDIF, then DoP would be out of the question.

Why do you want to do DoP when you can do Native?
 

somebodyelse

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The sample code from XMOS talks to the dfu mode on my Focusrite Forte after changing the usb vendor and product ids to match. The Forte uses an older XMOS chip. I wanted to know about linux support before buying the Tone Board, so can't test further. It would be useful if @Ben1987 could test and confirm for linux and Mac users as it seems I'm not the only one.

The sample code is in the 'USB audio 2.0 software' from XMOS (free account needed). After unzipping, go to sc_usb_audio/module_dfu/host/xmos_dfu_osx where you'll find xmosdfu.cpp as referred to in this thread which explains how to compile it on linux. It looks for the xmos vendor id and the product ids of their evaluation boards, so unless the Tone Board reuses those you'll need to change XMOS_VID and the pidList[] accordingly before compiling. There's no command line help, so refer to the source for usage. Note that dfu takes a device centric view of things, so 'upload' transfers existing firmware from the board to the computer, and 'download' loads new firmware onto the board. I tried fetching existing firmware from the Forte to local file forte-test.dfu:
Code:
$ sudo ./xmosdfu --upload forte-test.dfu
VID = 0x1d6b, PID = 0x3, BCDDevice: 0x415
VID = 0x1235, PID = 0x8010, BCDDevice: 0x1f6
XMOS DFU application started - Interface 3 claimed
Detaching device from application mode.
Waiting for device to restart and enter DFU mode...
VID = 0x1235, PID = 0x8010, BCDDevice: 0x1f6
... DFU firmware upgrade device opened
... Uploading image (forte-test.dfu) from device
... Returning device to application mode
I ended up with a small binary file, and a Forte that's not broken.
 

drewfIr

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'Not possible' is a bit premature. Updating from linux is not supported, and I suspect not even tried. There is example code from XMOS that apparently compiles after a single line change, and will probably work as I doubt Khadas have changed the DFU part of the XMOS sample code. XMOS have just sorted the problem I had creating an account on their site, so I'll see what I can do.


The sample code from XMOS talks to the dfu mode on my Focusrite Forte after changing the usb vendor and product ids to match. The Forte uses an older XMOS chip. I wanted to know about linux support before buying the Tone Board, so can't test further. It would be useful if @Ben1987 could test and confirm for linux and Mac users as it seems I'm not the only one.

The sample code is in the 'USB audio 2.0 software' from XMOS (free account needed). After unzipping, go to sc_usb_audio/module_dfu/host/xmos_dfu_osx where you'll find xmosdfu.cpp as referred to in this thread which explains how to compile it on linux. It looks for the xmos vendor id and the product ids of their evaluation boards, so unless the Tone Board reuses those you'll need to change XMOS_VID and the pidList[] accordingly before compiling. There's no command line help, so refer to the source for usage. Note that dfu takes a device centric view of things, so 'upload' transfers existing firmware from the board to the computer, and 'download' loads new firmware onto the board. I tried fetching existing firmware from the Forte to local file forte-test.dfu:
Code:
$ sudo ./xmosdfu --upload forte-test.dfu
VID = 0x1d6b, PID = 0x3, BCDDevice: 0x415
VID = 0x1235, PID = 0x8010, BCDDevice: 0x1f6
XMOS DFU application started - Interface 3 claimed
Detaching device from application mode.
Waiting for device to restart and enter DFU mode...
VID = 0x1235, PID = 0x8010, BCDDevice: 0x1f6
... DFU firmware upgrade device opened
... Uploading image (forte-test.dfu) from device
... Returning device to application mode
I ended up with a small binary file, and a Forte that's not broken.


Nice, had read that thread you linked. But since do not know enough
about building stuff did not give that a try. Would need a step by step
guide to be able to update the firmware on the Tone Board on Linux.

It would be nice, if we Linux users could update the firmware. Since
there is a preliminary firmware for controlling the volume digitally.

Thank You
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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Are there any problems using the VIM-Edition as a normal DAC? The Generic-Edition is not available at the moment.
That is the version I had and tested so no problem at all other than any consideration for the case you may want to put it in.
 
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