USB Dac prototype

Since I got my mac mini, I discovered the wonderful world of Internet radio. Boy, listening to all those far away stations is sooooo much fun. The world isn’t that big huh?

However, the mini’s tiny speaker limits my fun. Not good.

I then searched around and sure enough there’s audio output but using some tiny connector. I looked at it and decided there has to be a better way. Well, a friend pointed me towards the direction of USB Dacs. Damn! Why didn’t I think of this earlier?

A search on the WWW finds quite a number of USB Dacs. I’m like couples of years late!

Oh well, better late than never. After discussing with vt4c, the layout of the PCB was finally done. Chosen chip is PCM2706. Very interesting chip. Takes in USB, and outputs analog signals, SPDIF or I2S. No programming needed, no sofftware to install and best of all, works on Windows and Mac. Excellent!

The star here is of course, the PCM206 chip. The other chip is meant for the SPDIF circuitry. If you don’t need SPDIF, then you don’t need this chip. So few components eh?

Note that there was a mistake on the USB jack. Thus have to install it on the bottom. No problem.

For testing purpose, using the internal PCM2706 DAC to drive Charlize. It’s actually a headphone amp but what the heck?

Current PC system. Speakers used are the Jordan JXr 6HD towers.

Ahhh… internet radio is a lot more fun now. But don’t worry, there’s enough to go around! Once I play around more with this cute little fella, will post more details on the website.

29 October 2006 | diyparadise | Comments