[gaboo]

Interesting read: http://www.1394ta.org/Press/2003Pres...hite_paper.pdf, especially pages 4-5.

OXUF922 has both 1394b and USB interface. The serial audio interface is detailed on page 55. They avoid the magic word i2s, (licensing issues?) but the interface seems identical. Also, one can configure the receiver (i.e. DAC) to be the master clock, so it should be ideal for non-oversampling DACs...

Furthermore, the chip has ATA100 interface, and can also used for 1394b ATA hard drive enclosures! I smell mass production here. Right now the price of firewire 800 stuff is quite high. It should come down in price when market share increases.

I have wet dreams of modding my next external HDD enclosure with a DAC...

Joke aside, please comment on this!

 

[gaboo]

OXUF922 has an ARM7 50Mhz core, same core as ipod's PP5002B-C cpu, so it could run uClinux. PP5002B-C has extra hardware for MP3/AAC, but lacks built-in 1394, so a separate TI chip is used on the ipod.

I don't think we're going to see portable players based OXUF922, because it lacks the MP3/AAC stuff. The core itself is fast enough to decode flac, so with proper firmware it could play straight from a hard disk.

One can buy eval boards from here: http://www.oxsemi.co.uk/pages/evalboards. Prices are not listed though, and it's not clear if the I2S output has a plug or not...

For a home made dac/flac-pod, one would need only the EV-OXFW912-1394B-800 main board with IDE interface, and
DS-OXFW912-1394B-800 which has the firewire connector, and most important, comes with the development tools.

flac-pod anyone?

Oxsemi also makes OXFW970 which has 4x serial audio outputs, but there are no eval boards for that. It doesn't have any onboard decoders for AC-3/DTS, so making a HT receiver from it is far from simple. But we're probably going to see firewire surrond sund cards based on this one.

 

[gaboo]

It comes in 160-pin LQFP or 176-pin BGA. I don't think I want to solder these.

Boards with the BGA package won't even be moddable if the I2S is not available on the PCB.

So the only reasonable option is buying the eval boards.