New A-EON Music Card for Classic Amigas

[XDelusion]

OK...but MP3 decoding can be done with one dirt cheap chip.
Why the programmable logic?
And, frankly, these days I'm more interested in FLAC.

I'm with you on the FLAC, though I know I won't want Gigs of MP3's on my Amiga's hard drive, so the few I'll have I'll just convert from FLAC, but yes, FLAC playback on Amiga would be awesome!

[amigakit]

Spirantho has already got the Prisma card playing OGG files on his Amiga 2000.   Perhaps we can do some FLAC tests?

[Ral-Clan]

SPDIF was always useful when I was recording music with my Amiga.  I would use it to transfer mix-downs digitally from my DAT recorder back to the Amiga for burning to CD.

Could also be used for transferring field recordings from minidisc (with SPDIF out) to the Amiga, or from a digital mixer to the Amiga.

[SysAdmin]

@amigakit

Looks like a great sound card, I hope you sell a ton of them.

[Iggy]

The chip on board does FLAC too

Here's the information on the sound card:


http://www.a-eon.com/18-10-2013-2.pdf

That is nice.
I have never gotten used to using a compression scheme that guarantees lower quality.

I'm still not sure I understand the hardware, but since Trevor is having a version made for a PCI-E expansion slot, if its useful we'll be able to use it in more than the X1000.

[spirantho]

I think FLAC may be optimistic for a 68000 - it requires a lot of data bandwidth and we're already pushing it just with a high-bitrate OGG/MP3. I can try though.
It's only CD-quality, though - no 20- or 24-bit or 96KHz I'm afraid.

[Gulliver]

@spirantho
I doubt it is a full digital path for SPDIF, as the chip seems to provide only analog outputs. Unless you are doing something wicked with that built-in XilinX.

On the hardware side, you could offer something interesting with the 12 GPIO pins the DSP chip has. Maybe an expansion module that could provide a sort of Geekport or a simple series of relais for controlling fun stuff, or even a LCD module that could display some playback parameters.

[matt3k]

Agree with others.

If your going to build it, build it right.

FLAC and Digital I/O would be a very nice touch.  As an added bonus, if it had a z3 mode for optimal bus speed (or at least some trickery to help - similar to what the Delfina Plus bus is capable of doing).

I would bet almost all the cards users will have at least an 030.  I would put my efforts for 030,  040 and 060 playback to make FLAC usable.

Appreciate the effort and looking forward to the final product.

[spirantho]

@spirantho
I doubt it is a full digital path for SPDIF, as the chip seems to provide only analog outputs. Unless you are doing something wicked with that built-in XilinX.

I suspected as much. Nonetheless, the audio path between the decoder and the S/PDIF is still much shorter and should held reduce the noise over an analogue output.

On the hardware side, you could offer something interesting with the 12 GPIO pins the DSP chip has. Maybe an expansion module that could provide a sort of Geekport or a simple series of relais for controlling fun stuff, or even a LCD module that could display some playback parameters.

There are possibilities. There are certainly things that could be done with the GPIO ports, but the first goal is to make the board and make it work. Extra things like that could be added on to future versions and I'm sure Amigakit are always open to considering such suggestions.

@matt3k
FLAC works fine - it just might struggle on a vanilla 68000... as most people have 68030s at least, and anyone with enough storage space to hold FLACs will almost definitely have at least a 68030 it shouldn't be a problem.

I don't think Z3 will be in the first versions, anyway - but it's not that necessary I don't think. Maybe for highly compressed FLACs, it'd help. We'll be concentrating on Z-II and clockport first, anyway.

[UberFreak]

I suspected as much. Nonetheless, the audio path between the decoder and the S/PDIF is still much shorter and should held reduce the noise over an analogue output.

The degradation caused by D/A -> A/D -> D/A again is far greater than minor noise that might be added to the analog out.
Too bad there's no real digital path, I thought about building an A4000 music streamer.
Most of the content I listen to is FLAC at 16-24bits, ranging from 44.1Khz up to 192Khz.

Guess I'll stick with a PC for music playback

[spirantho]

You're probably right about that, yes.
What I would say, though, is that my A1500 produces a lot less noise than my PC with it's X-Fi soundcard. I can ramp the volume up much more before I get too much background noise.
That's with an analogue output at the moment.

[amigakit]

@amigakit

Looks like a great sound card, I hope you sell a ton of them.

Thanks, we are working to get good software support for this product to make it really useful.  Hope to get direct support in things such as SCUMMVM and AmigaAmp - maybe FFMPEG would be a good candidate program.

[XDelusion]

Thanks, we are working to get good software support for this product to make it really useful.  Hope to get direct support in things such as SCUMMVM and AmigaAmp - maybe FFMPEG would be a good candidate program.

Fingers crossed for AHI and Digibooster support as well.

[Erol]

Lets not forget AIFF,  which is making a come back on beatport.com

[spirantho]

Just for reference if anyone's interested in FLAC - My A1500 (7.14MHz, OS3.1) just managed to play a FLAC of I Feel Fine by the Beatles (2:20) without problem, but it did need a hefty buffer size of 1MB (my Zip drive isn't a speed demon ).

Next comes the "Yes" test (7 minutes), then comes the Iron Butterfly test (In-a-gadda-da-vida - all 17 minutes of it - though that won't fit on a Zip disk as a FLAC!)

[amigakit]

Wow!  That its really amazing that a 68000 can handle the FLAC file with Prisma decoding.