[emueyes]

Hi all, I have a question about some hardware I've seen on eBay. namely the CM6631A  USB cards
 
I have seen many of these cards on eBay, and of the same thing with USB and optical/coax digital connectors. I am wondering, are they actually soundcards? That is, can I hook one up to a computer via USB and to my receiver via an optical cable?
 
My particular case is for use with an ARM development board. It has good gfx but terrible sound, and if I can get decent sound then it can be used as I want, as a small music server (small as in wattage), with output straight to the receiver and control done with DLNA.
 
These boards seem to be associated with a few other boards more often than not, so I'd like to be sure of what I'm doing. I have has a response from one eBay seller telling me that he'll send me software (drivers?) if I buy a card from him. But, I'd still like to know what I'm doing
 
TIA

 

[PurpleAngel]

  Hi all, I have a question about some hardware I've seen on eBay. namely the CM6631A  USB cards
 
I have seen many of these cards on eBay, and of the same thing with USB and optical/coax digital connectors. I am wondering, are they actually sound cards? That is, can I hook one up to a computer via USB and to my receiver via an optical cable?
 
My particular case is for use with an ARM development board. It has good gfx but terrible sound, and if I can get decent sound then it can be used as I want, as a small music server (small as in wattage), with output straight to the receiver and control done with DLNA.
 
These boards seem to be associated with a few other boards more often than not, so I'd like to be sure of what I'm doing. I have has a response from one eBay seller telling me that he'll send me software (drivers?) if I buy a card from him. But, I'd still like to know what I'm doing

They are not sound cards, they are assorted DACs (Digital to Analog Converter), some of them convert one type of digital audio to another form of digital audio.
What you seem to need is a USB DAC, USB digital input to analog output. To connect between the computer's USB port to the receiver's analog input (RCA jacks?)
On a windows PC, usually when a USB DAC is plugged into it, Windows loads the correct drivers for it automatically, what OS is your ARM using?

 

[emueyes]

Thanks for the reply The board is Snapdragon S4 based http://www.inforcecomputing.com/product/moreinfo/ifc6410.html running Fedora 19 and XBMC as a media server. I had read that Linux has support for the CM6631A chips, which is what started me thinking.
 
I also have an Odroid U2 with an Exynos ARM chip, same story (Linaro/Ubuntu Linux) with lousy sound hardware. I don't think either board will ever run Windows.
 
Yeah, I need to convert a USB signal, read from an audio file, then redirect it over Toslink preferably, or analog if need be, to feed my receiver. I have seen very cheap ($8) usb sticks that claim to do this, and thought that these cards might be a slightly better alternative having the CM chips on them. It's a point of contention between myself and some of the board developers that they showcase h264 decoding, for example, and mostly ignore audio.

 

[emueyes]

To further confuse me, I found this page talking about much the same need as I have. The products they mention eventually link back to the same CM based card I saw originally, as well as to a couple of other USB to S/PDIF converters. 
 
http://www.raspyfi.com/the-right-usb-dac-for-your-raspberry-pi/
 
Yeah, I don't own a RasPi, same principal though.