Many people enjoy the sound of traditional MULTIBIT DACs, such as the AD1865/62, PCM170402, PCM63, TDA1541/A and many others. However, most of these MULTIBIT DACs were designed to work with digital filter chips through a PCM interface that transmits left and right data simultaneously. In this case, the problem is that the sound quality and maximum sampling rate (Fs) of these DACs may be limited by the performance of the oversampling digital filter chip, due to low computational accuracy, the interpolation algorithm and old technologies delivering high jitter.

To improve the sound quality by using better jitter reduction technology and to allow the playback of higher sample rates, it is necessary to get rid of the limitation of the digital filter chip by driving the MULTIBIT DAC from a high performance oversampling filter or by directly streaming a high sample rate audio stream. It is therefore necessary to use an optimized jitter system to control the MULTIBIT DAC in NOS mode from an I2S bus.

This I2S to PCM module from Ian Canada has been developed with exactly this in mind to improve the sound performance of these audio systems.

Key features :

• Support PCM 16/18/20/24bit outputs.
• Accepts I2S input signals from 16 to 32bit with SCK from 32*Fs to 64*Fs.
• Pure NOS mode with bit-perfect format conversion.
• High speed design with support for sample rates up to 384kHz (Fs) and a maximum MCLK of 100MHz.
• Supports PCM63, AD1865, AD1862, PCM1704, PCM1702, TDA1541/A and many other MULTIBIT DACs.
• Supports the operation of the TDA1541/A in offset binary mode.
• Full and half speed mode selectable via jumper.
• Simultaneous L/R synchronization, starting the digital/analog conversion on the same locking edge to eliminate the L/R phase difference.
• In order to reduce the background noise of the DAC the clock can be stopped after shifting the data into the DAC (default).
• Supports dual-monoc DAC configurations.
• Logical synchronization architecture optimized for jitter.