--- Thomas Brandon <tom@PSY.UNSW.EDU.AU> wrote:
> First of all I'd like to apologise for my other
> reply. It was so off topic I
> had meant to reply personally.
>
> I've seen a few things on people making their own
> sound related devices
> recently. Almost all of these messages has led to
> someone stating that
> building a high quality audio device at home is just
> not possible.
> I would like to hear from anyone who has made (or
> attempted to make) their
> own audio device. Did it work? What was the quality
> like? Was it worth it?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: marquis De <desade666@YAHOO.COM>
> Subject: sound cards, spdif, etc
>
>
> <SNIP>
> >   my point "picsters" is not to shoot down the
> simplicity of the pic,
> > merely to point out the absurdity in trying to
> make a $20-$50 sound
> > card do things with a PIC that other cards do off
> the shelf, for as
> > little as say $500
> >   consider the time it takes to reverse engineer a
> sound blaster, and
> > then program a PIC to add functionality...youve
> already (in a sense)
> > bought a better card?
> <SNIP>
> > i think in the long run, youll be happier
> <SNIP>
>
tom,
 well to answer youre question....i have made pro-audio gear. and to me
it was worth it. definatly NOT s easy thing to do....
but it all started with the premise that:
DSP chips inside recievers must be "a computer" from a shear number
crunching stand point (im using the term losely also) especialy with
the AC-3 codec 5.1 or 7.1
so i sought to make my own "lovetoy"
so i designed and built a amp with 700 watts (typ) output, with 6
channels (1 sub at 200 watts, 5 channels at 100ea) exclusive mono-which
means the channels share nothing more than the power cord, the torroid
has separate positive and negetive outputs for each channel
i used exicon lateral mosfets from england, and strapped them to a 20kg
heatsink, which weighed about 100lbs before the machine shop milled it
down....
so i figured it was time to give some brains to the brawn.
after searching for "the" state of the art DSP chip, i came accross the
ADSP 21065 SHARC. a 32-bit floating point DSP more than able to
interprit AC-3, so i sought them out, and got a sample of a quad
proccessor card for the DSP engine, i then got a 10.4" (diagnal) LCD
screen and a touchscreen, which uses the PIC 16c58a to get the X and Y
from the touchscreen, threw in a ethercard, all built on a passive
backplane and i threw in a 166 pentium cpu and let fly....
well after all the bugs were worked out i realized what i had....no
longer were my intentions for a simple pre-amp....this was pro-audio
through and through...
so, i saved more money to buy a p3 500mhz, and have ultra SCSI-2 built
into the CPU card, also had to have the LCD video included, then i put
a PC-104 socket on with 72 megs of nvram, so to have the win98 boot
files superfast....
well, to make a long story short, it does the job...it sounds amazing,
it records multiple tracks without stutter, plays mp3 and laughs at me
for insulting it?
  so was it worth it?
well, i think so, but im a audio freak, i love music more than life
itself, so to me yes
it would cost around 6 or 7 grand to build it, and several thousand
hours of time to design, but i dont intend to buy another stereo till
im a very old man.
desade
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