8 Channel USB sound device for LaserBoy

Check this out! I just got two of these today! It is a CM6206 chip; which is a second generation to the C106L that is on the other USB sound device.

http://www.usbgear.com/USBG-SOUND-71.html

It has a full sized USB input port. That's nice!

I still don't have this one all figured out yet. Whe I measure the idel voltage on the outputs before the decoupling caps, I get about 1.25VDC. That's only half of what I should get. Maybe I should work with it like a sound card first, before I go hacking it! :rolleyes: It has push buttons on it for external volume. That might be something to have to work around.

http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserBoy/USB_8_01.jpg
http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserBoy/USB_8_02.jpg
http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserBoy/USB_8_03.jpg

James. :)

you finally got it in?

geez! well keep us updated on it!


also im pming you right now!

Yep.. See those surface mount caps and resistors after the decoupling caps. I bet their there to eliminate white noise AKA, hiss at idle. I'd suggest removing the electrolytic caps and bypassing that portion of the circuit all together. That's my opinion, I maybe wrong, I'd have to look at the traces to be sure.

Well... I got two for a reason!

I'm off to bed now, but I'm going to jump all over it tomorrow.

BTW I am one of the featured artists in a thing called 5² (Five Squared). It is a gathering of 25 artists from the community I live in. Every artist was chosen for a different medium. The piece I will be recognized for is...............................................

LaserBoy !!!

Now it's official. LaserBoy is f**king art man! :D

James. :)

Cool, this is a lot easier than soldering onto the 2 extra pins of the 6 channel card, for those who want 8 channel. Hopefully the data isn't processed on its way to the card as well!

I have an 8 channel USB DAC !!!

YEAH !!!! :D

http://hacylon.case.edu/laser/LaserBoy/USB_8_04.jpg

DrLava figured out that this card runs off of 3.3 VDC, not 5. So the offset is less and the output is too.

So I modified my original prototype once again and made it work.

James. :)

Nice! Do you have plans for X/Y/R/G/B/V/I/? outputs from laserboy or something else?

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Originally Posted by dar303

Nice! Do you have plans for X/Y/R/G/B/V/I/? outputs from laserboy or something else?

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More like X, Y, R, G, B, I, AUDIO_L, AUDIO_R !!!! :D

This device will be able to play back ALL eight channels of an ADAT show that has been transcribed to hard drive or DVDR.

James. :)

how about x/y/r/g/b/dmx/Laudio/Raudio

pangolin did it with the cadamod

Quote:

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Originally Posted by James Lehman

More like X, Y, R, G, B, I, AUDIO_L, AUDIO_R !!!! :D

This device will be able to play back ALL eight channels of an ADAT show that has been transcribed to hard drive or DVDR.

James. :)

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Hmmm, I have a portable DVR that has surround out, I wonder if I can put my 8 channel waves on that & play back though. Would make for a nice portable controller for laser boy

Nope.

You need a real computer with a DVD drive in it. You might also need a hard drive to transfer the ADAT data to, in the case that it needs to be inverted or the colors need to be realigned.

James. :)

pangolin had access to the user bits in the ADATs raw datastream. Those don't exist in the sound card data.

Steve

One of the cheapest and neatest ways to get ADAT data and actual audio signals on 8 outs too, is the Gina 24 card by Echo. All DAC (and two channels of ADC) are on the PCI card, appearing on a DB-25. Rare though, and not as cheap and available as C106-based USB cards and similar. Nice mods though, on those.

James, I'm not sure what you needed to do to change that 3.3V scale with its 1.25V offset, but one way is as I use in the attached image. Most designs I've seen use two op-amp stages, so this is an improvement, and it's good for single supply use too. This circuit was for something else, but applies to lots of things. Might need to change value of gain setting resistance or offset input volts, but unlikely. Also, might need negative offset input volts, but will still work on single supply so long as output doesn't have to go negative.).

This is the original design that I prototyped back in January of 2005.

Note there is a zener for the -5VDC voltage reference for offset. The +/-12VDC comes from the PCI slot.

http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/grap...laser_h_95.jpg
Someone on the PL pointed out these nifty DC/DC converters. So that became part of the plan. The +5VDC from USB becomes +/-9VDC. Very handy magic!

Then I got together with drlava and he suggested a fixed -5V regulator. So that's what comes on the pcb kit that we did.

In order to fix the general design to work with 3.3VDC and a bit less output, I swithed out the fixed -5V regulator for an LM337 variable negative voltage regulator and a trim pot.

Now I can set my gains to full and my offsets to middle and dial my offset voltage in on one trip pot, then tweak each channel with it's own offset pot.

I wasn't getting all the way up to +5V on my color channels, so I put 47K in series with the 50K gain pot. This just about doubles the maximum gain of the channel.

James. :)

Your schemo is very similar to the one Dean designed. What do the 1M resisters do for you?

James. :)

I like mine a bit better. :) More independence between gain and offset controls, and it preserves signal polarity, though I have used an offset tweak based on feeding the -ve input via a 10M resistor for very fine leverage to get fine adj of zero offset, here: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...0845#post20845)
When biasing over several volts instead of a few millivolts, I wanted a different way. I also wanted single supply operation, so no inversion of signal. So I used a non-inverting amp, which is fine for gains at or above 1. I used a passive averager with two 1M resistors, then gain of 2 on the result when using two inputs. (10M for input resistors is better if the environment is electrically silent). The circuit works for negative or dual rails too, if you supply them, and a negative DC offset input signal can be used at any time so long as output is in range of supply. That signal has to be stable but the supply can be anything so long as it's quiet and large enough. Being 'quiet' also means that the offset signal can be taken direct from the supply, so only a supply regulator is needed for good results. And sometimes a negative DC signal might be needed, but only a positive single rail supply, in which case I can tap whatever's there as it won't load it much. In short, this circuit is very compact and hugely adaptable to many and varied situations, so the layout can be modular and copied between designs with little extra work. Only change that might be needed is where the offset pot grounds to, might also be -ve supply, but this one was meant for broad tweaks for signals that peaked at zero, not crossed it.

I like DC-DC convertors too, but they cost loads. At the end of the thread I linked to just now I posted a new version of that circuit (that no-one seems to care about, but never mind). In it I wanted isolation so I could have a common ground but a floating supply, and a high voltage to give full scale of >20W read on a meter using 1mV per mW. I needed 22V and enough negative to tweak the offset to zero accurately, and run it all on a 5V single rail supply. Because of the cost of the converter, I only use one if it satifies several things I can't do easily another way, but it's perfect for that meter circuit.

WOW! Look at what I just made!

http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_001.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_002.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_003.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_004.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_005.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_006.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_007.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_008.jpg
http://www.akrobiz.com/laserboy/anni...hil8or_009.jpg

I call this The Annihil8or! :D

This is an 8 channel LaserBoy Correction Amp, with a variable negative offset reference voltage and a lot of gain. This one has a tracks matrix patch block so you can rearrange the tracks any way you want on the analog side. Since the audio jacks and DC decoupling caps are still in place on the sound card, you can lift any paired signal lines out of the track matrix and use the jack for standard stereo audio! You can also lift the +5VDC from the USB connection and power it with a little wall wart! By default X, Y, R, G, & B are soldered in place, but the remaining 3 signals can be assigned to the 3 auxiliary color signal lines in the ILDA connector (or not). So you can use all 8 channels for laser signals. The red jumper is the safety interlock switch. There is a +5VDC (TTL level) shutter actuator on pin 13.



In the process of making this, I think I may have found a cure for my Echo Layla woes. :D

BTW, I don't think this one is for me. I'm pretty sure it belongs to someone else! :rolleyes:

I can't wait to make another one for myself!

Start thinking about getting all those old ADAT tapes together for one last play. Once all that data gets to hard drive, it can be properly preserved.

James. :)

wow, that's some piece of work james!

congrats!

I'll have to send you some laser printer copper transfer pages for future projects, they work quite well :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by James Lehman

I think I may have found a cure for my Echo Layla woes. :D

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Was she a fickle mistress?

Actually, she flipped out just before she got to SELEM! For some reason, the ADAT pass-through is now inverted and Windows doesn't have the right codec to play multi channel waves anymore!

James. :)

james check this
http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Docume...WAVE/WAVE.html
i think i posted this link before

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Originally Posted by gf8stiv3

wow, that's some piece of work james!

congrats!

I'll have to send you some laser printer copper transfer pages for future projects, they work quite well :)

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Thanks!

Do you mean for making printed circuit boards?

I love making stuff like this; especially when it works! :p

James. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by James Lehman

Actually, she flipped out just before she got to SELEM! For some reason, the ADAT pass-through is now inverted and Windows doesn't have the right codec to play multi channel waves anymore!

James. :)

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Yep, that's fickle. I never used the ADAT bit. Codec for WAV is another thing though. Sounds to me like some app stole some file associations. That happens a LOT in Windows. Not Windows fault, it just has lots of people coding for it who don't think about that when they make their installers.

Re boards, there a guy in Italy on eBay who sells FR4 board with coper on both sides and photosensitive resist on them. It's about a quarter the usual price and works well so far for me. I use a LaserJet 5N to print to matt mylar sheet, and overspray afterwards with clear acrylic spray to darken the traces and protect them. Jem advised me on some of this, and got me some great film sheets. I used that blue iron-on transfer film since for that LED lamp when I needed to work with ultrathin PCB, but for accuracy I don't like it much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by James Lehman

Thanks!

Do you mean for making printed circuit boards?

I love making stuff like this; especially when it works! :p

James. :)

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I'll set him up with a decent version of eagle, if he behaves himself and agrees that production runs go to a boardhouse, I'd hate to see the pugs get stained with FeCl.

Steve

RE the Layla, actually, I think it IS Windows' fault. I'm not sure, but I think that with SP3 or one of the "automatic updates", the signatures of some of the codecs were set to be no longer recognized.

James. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by James Lehman

RE the Layla, actually, I think it IS Windows' fault. I'm not sure, but I think that with SP3 or one of the "automatic updates", the signatures of some of the codecs were set to be no longer recognized.

James. :)

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Which is the other side of the same coin. M$ wanted to try to reign in the loose adding of badly made code because whenever a third party broke something people blamed Windows. Which has plenty wrong too. If you can hack past the protections you'll be ok. Basically they ought to be bypassable if you know how, I think they're designed as damage limitation, I hope they not too strongly enforced.

I don't use WXP though, I'd rather make W98 SE do things I want, it's easier than trying to keep up and change everything just to suit an OS. I thought OS's were supposed to enable us to do things, not to police what we do.

The irony here is that MS invented the wave file format. Obviously, they didn't invent the idea of PCM digital audio, but they did come up with a way to store it that was compliant with their RIFF, extensible, media, chunk file formats.

You know as well as anyone, there is NOTHING special about waves! They are just pure data. They are not compressed or encrypted. They don't need ANY codec!

Somewhere between Media Player 9, Windows 2000 and the move toward Vista, MS decided that pure multi channel waves were a bit too open, possibly a way to distribute craked material. So they yanked the ability for Windows to recognize them.... their own file format!

There is good news though!

KeeperX reports that spider player works great, and it's FREE!!!

http://spider-player.com

He's using it right now. I have yet to try it.

I'm still messing with code. :rolleyes:

James. :)

here is my report

Your scanners need to be tuned! :D

James. :)

thats what i keep saying.. i need better mirrors then i will tune them these are too heavy..

A few thoughts, in no particular order...

Spider wants WXP. Boo. Hiss. >:) W98 SE all the way for me...

But then there's Foobar 2000. I have the last one compiled for W9X, and I like it better than most. WinAmp plugins might be a way to go, but the klunky WinAmp interface sucks. I never liked the fiddly busy little box. I suspect that Media Player Classic might also handle multichannel WAV's. That program is great, just a single executable and an INI file... Uses DirectX codecs too, but has a lot of native support internally. Neither MPC or Foobar look like handling multichannel WAV's though. Foobar won't touch them, MPC plays two main channels but not the rest, and goes into a complex seizure if I try to look at the file properties.

While Googling to see if FooBar handled multichannels, I immediately saw an interesting suggestion: use FLAC or (better) WavPack, for multichannel. That way you will need a codec but you get BIG lossless compression because laser control waves will be like analog synth forms, highly compressible. You might also neatly sidestep the proprietary WAV format because you won't actually be saving in that format at all. :) Also, those formats have wide support in many OS's.

Another idea is wxLua. That's a nice system (portable across many OS's), and appears to have a code example for a small media player. Each time I tried loading a file type listed as ok it said it couldn't handle the file but maybe someone (James?) who knows code might want to look at it to see if it could be good. Lua is much more amenable to code dabblers with rigour but lack of deep grounding in C to edit and make stuff, so if this can be applied to laser controls it might end up getting a following here. Just needs someone knowledgeble enough to sound it out to see if it will go. If it does, it might be ideal because all you need is the wxLua executable and a text editor to start doing useful things. It's a lot more appealing than the usual huge code developer suites, and Lua and wxLua (which is just Lua extended by wxWidgets) is really nice to use, so long as you have a clear idea what you want it to do. We could build our own control wave players with it, hopefully, if nothing else.

The ONLY player i have found that works in Vista for multichannel waves and here is why...

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Windows Vista features a completely re-written audio stack based on the Universal Audio Architecture. Because of the architectural changes in the redesigned audio stack, a direct path from DirectSound to the audio drivers does not exist. DirectSound and other APIs such as MME are emulated as WASAPI Session instances. DirectSound runs in emulation mode on the Microsoft software mixer. The emulator does not have hardware abstraction, so there is no hardware DirectSound acceleration, meaning hardware and software relying on DirectSound acceleration may have degraded performance. It's likely a supposed performance hit might not be noticeable, depending on the application and actual system hardware. In the case of hardware 3D audio effects played using DirectSound3D, they will not be playable.
Third-party APIs such as ASIO and OpenAL are not affected by these architectural changes in Windows Vista. A solution for applications that wish to take advantage of hardware accelerated high-quality 3D positional audio is to use OpenAL. However, this only works if the manufacturer provides an OpenAL driver for their hardware

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not sure why spider works, but it works...

I believe they will be usinf XAudio2 to fix the issues tho

I've been running winamp (www.winamp.com) to play my laserboy wav files, also free :)

in vista??
or in XP...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by keeperx

in vista??
or in XP...

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I've used it in vista & xp

well i have not been able to get it to work in vista with winamp... at any rate i know spider works and its less bloated than winamp

Thanks (everyone) for sharing this information. It is very helpful. :D

James. :)

your welcome james.. took me a while to figure out why i was having all those issues :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by keeperx

well i have not been able to get it to work in vista with winamp... at any rate i know spider works and its less bloated than winamp

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Oh, I had an issue in vista, but fixed it by going into the output plugin and selecting the usb audio driver with surround support, then had to do some tweaking.

I'm going to check out your spider player, as I am not happy with all the extra stuff winamp has to it

FYI make the USB sound card the primary device before opening spider.. once spider is open you can change it back to secondary (so you can do sound in spaghetti)