New Schiit Modius DAC

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

I often wonder if the XMOS chip isn't the root cause of all the effort we go through to make USB listenable.

 

Electrically I don't think so. Most differentiation of USB input stages are about all the little details immediately surrounding the processor. Quality of power networks, tiny low-inductance bypass caps next to ever power pin, isolation, clocking, layout. etc.

Not that I am going to defend the XMOS dev environment or bloated stock code they come with.  

 

Schiit made the (wise) choice to move away from Cmedia and to something more open and flexible. Obviously there would be no point to just go from Cmedia to XMOS. And now that Windows (finally!) natively supports UAC2, the whole writing or licensing (and updating) drivers nightmare goes away.

 

The Microchip PIC32MZ EF microcontroller was a cool choice for their "Unison" input, giving them independence and flexibility for the future. Those chips have already have lots of built-in I/O (including Ethernet, USB, ADC, and even some graphics) and a good deal of memory. Microchip provides its own development environment (MPLAB), but I read about someone loading Linux into a PIC32.

[Superdad]

33 minutes ago, feelingears said:

So does comment this imply they could choose to someday employ the base ingredients of their secret USB sauce with direct Ethernet input?

 

Sure, though there is not really any "secret sauce" to the PIC32 processor itself.  Schiit wrote/tweaked USB code for it and combined it with some of the same external post-processor isolation (brought over from their Gen5 boards).

But yes, the processor they use supports 10/100Mbps Ethernet (as do many of the much smaller and slower PIC32 versions). Here is even a $100 PIC32 Ethernet starter kit:

https://www.microchip.com/Developmenttools/ProductDetails/DM320004-2#additional-summary

 

But remember:

Adding Ethernet as digital audio input is about much more than just the Ethernet MAC processing stack.  It's about supporting some higher-level audio player endpoint protocol, be it Roon RAAT, HQ Player NAA, UPnP/DLNA, Squeeze, or AES67/Ravenna, etc.

Or they could do something proprietary--as long as they offer some player on the host end.

[Superdad]

5 minutes ago, happypappy said:

Sounds very interesting, though I do wonder about the fact that it's powered by USB instead of a quality separate power supply. 

 

Modius has a separate (microUSB) power input jack for those who wish to power it from an external +5VDC power supply instead of using USB 5VBUS power. So you just need a $0.50 DC-barrel>microUSB adapter to use with your present DC supply.