Maelgrum wrote on 2023-10-10, 22:53:
Why you want to capture DAC data?
two reasons - way to analyze the presence of the 'clicking' issue, as well get much higher quality analog output instead of 30 years old one.
Maelgrum wrote on 2023-10-10, 22:53:
1. If you want to do Spdif output, it's is complicated, as sample rate is variable.
I believe by SPDIF you understood - Optical Output, but I mean it more broadly as any digital output that can be connected easily to much higher quality DAC and analogue circuit than what is found on SB16-series of cards. In fact in the past here there were discussion of my such "pure digital" setups, for example:
Re: Pure DOS gaming system with 100% digital audio output
Maelgrum wrote on 2023-10-10, 22:53:
2. If you want to use high quality DAC, it's also complicated, as you need low jitter clock, low noise on Vcc, good opamps with low distortion, good routing on pcb, e. t. c, e.t.c. Designing good 16-bit audio path is not easy thing.
almost anything current is better than 30 years old DAC and analogue circuit on SB16-series of cards. for example you can google something like "Optical Fiber Coaxial DAC Digital Audio Decoder Board Converter"([EDIT] it seems those more often are called "Toslink DAC" - at least such search returns much more options and those are even in case, not bare PCB, i.e. consumer products - of course the price also doubles and it's more like 10-15 bucks) - those are such ready boards from China, of course, for 5 bucks - I am sure even that will beat the 30 old analogue circuits and DAC on SB16/AWE32.
Maelgrum wrote on 2023-10-10, 22:53:
Capture of raw data is easy, but what to do with it?
the raw data are I2S (that is the format of the input to those AK DACs), any logic analyzer can do I2S to PCM, that way we can capture the same sound as PCM (aka WAV file) in the digital domain - it will always be the same (when there are no error, i.e. bit-perfect to what the application outputted, e.g. the game) as no volume/mixing, etc is applied and capture it when there is no click and where is click and see the error, instead rely on "subjective" hearing by human ears of the analog stream and not clear judgement if there is improvement or not for example when some DSP changes are made.
[EDIT] I will definitely try such mod - already ordered some parts, but as the usual case, probably it will be over 1 month until I can report my results, because most of that time will be actually spend in waiting the necessary parts to arrive.