FET Audio | Hi-End Audio & Electronics DIY Electronics & Repair

January 9, 2012

XMOS USB Audio 2.0 Reference Design Jitter Measurement

Filed under: DAC,Sources — Spencer @ 10:06 pm

The XMOS demo board sold for $149 in digikey.  The firmware need to be loaded before the board can be used.  There is a digital out from the USB 2.0 demo board and thus it will be a easy interface from USB to FDA-1 optical input.  What you need to do is to get an optical cable to link up output of demo board and input of FDA-1 Toslink.  I have tested this mode and the sound is better than using Ti PCM2707 USB receiver with I2S output.

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On board, there is a I2S connector and thus the clock jitter measurement is taken at the MCLK, BCLK, LRCLK locations.  The jitter at MCLK from 48k to 192k Fs is from 10 to 13 pico second respectively which are excellent.  In fact the MCLK is taken directly from the onboard crystal oscillator after the buffer logic IC.  For jitter at other clock like BCLK (Bit Clock) and LRCLK (Word Clock, Fs), they are as high as 800 pS or above.  For any DAC using the MCLK as the clocking reference (like FDA-1), the result should be very good.

Attached is the document of jitter measurement for reference:

Jitter measurement by Lecroy DDA-120

From all the measurement, the lowest jitter mode is to set the output of the USB 2.0 at 24 bit with 48k Fs.

With a more accurate period jitter machine Wavecrest DTS-2070C, the jitter at MCLK is measured at only 4.6ps.  See attached document:

Jitter measurement by Wavecrest DTS-2070C

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December 2, 2011

Lecroy DDA-120 Jitter measurement

Filed under: Test Equipment — Spencer @ 8:29 pm

I acquired this machine for a month from Seagate Singapore but this set do not have the JTA software option for jitter measurement.  I have asked Lecroy for the cost of JTA option but they want to charge me 5k USD ! Anyway DDA-120 is for disk drive analysis and it has a simple jitter measurement using period@level function.  Also it has period, frequency, sigma and histogram function which is good enough to do some clock signal jitter measurment as below:

 I have also taken some measurements of DAC chips as in attached file.  They are WM8804, CS8416, DIR9001; SRC: CS8421, SRC4192 & AD1896.  The measurement is on the MCLK (master clock) of the DAC FDA-1 in different test version durng development.

Jitter Measurement

 

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November 15, 2011

hp 6632A System DC Power Supply

Filed under: Test Equipment — Spencer @ 12:02 am

This is a very old machine used for automatic tester with HPIB control capability.  There is some very good old transistors as shown.  The transformer is still EI type and thus the set very heavy even the size is not big!  The bad thing about this supply is too noisy for lab use due to fan noise.  But it is a very low noise and high speed power supply from 0 to 20V and 5A maximum.  If you want to change the input AC voltage, you have to open the set and select by two switches near the IEC socket.

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November 14, 2011

hp 3324A function generator photos

Filed under: Test Equipment — Spencer @ 11:36 pm

I acquired this function generator in Oct 2011 and here is some internal photos to share.  My set is with the internal 10Mhz reference oscillator option.

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October 12, 2011

Tektronix P6247 probe repair and internal photos

Filed under: Test Equipment — Spencer @ 12:57 pm

I won this lot of 5 pcs Tektronix P6247 differential probes about 2 years ago from Seagate Singapore sales. 

1. Out of 5, only two probe tip heads are working and thus I am able to recover two probes in full working conditions after repairs and adjustments.  Thus it is a real bargain for me!

2. One box is with two burnt logic ICs inside and no way I can repair it!  What I can do is just repair the connection cable.

3. Another box is working but with X10 not functioning.  Guess there is some logic defective inside.

4. The other box is with unknown conditions as I have not tested it with a working probe tip head.  Believe it is working conditions as I check the voltage at probe tip socket is normal conditions.

5. All the 5 connection wires were repaired.  The usual defective point is the probe head joining point loose and control wires may be broken or intermittent connection.  I peel off more plastic of the coaxial cable ground and wrap it with some ground shielding cable and then solder the ground wire onto the frame of the tip socket end.  After that wire connection is checked one by one by multimeters.

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This P6247 differential probe is very good for testing high frequency signal as it only has below 1pF capacitance value. It also has x1 and x10 selection, AC and DC mode plus the bandwith limit of 200Mhz.  I use that with a tek 1103 probe power supply and then I can connect it to any measurement equipment with 50 ohm termination like oscilloscope, frequency meter, spectrum analyzer etc…

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Here I put up some photos which will be very easy to understand more about the repair:

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