1a. No.
1b. Partly, since it has the same ES9018, and much of the setup is the same.
2. Yes, take it off.
3. Yes.
4a. Yes.
4b. No.

Some programming experience is required for a setup like this. The questions you ask make me doubt you fully understand how it all works, and I'm afraid you might get lost. It is very unfortunate the AC2 still isn't released, this would be a better fit for you.

In that case: the behaviour of the ES9018 is controlled using I2C. This is a serial protocol, with which you set the internal registers of the ES9018 chip. Most of the registers are covered in the code on glt's site. Registers range from volume, selected input and DPLL bandwidth to status registers and custom filters. I think it's best you obtain the datasheet if you wish to go this route.

To my knowledge there are no public documents on the firmware. Just rewrite the code depending on your needs, glt's code is very easy to follow and understand.

If you wire the inputs BIII the same as the BII (you can see the wiring of the BII in the Sabre32 tab), then the code will work the same for BIII. Since BIII has flexibly input and output configuration, you can enhance the code to take advantage of wiring flexibility of the BIII.

With BIII, all input pins are available and not pre-wired like BII. Therefore you can take full advantage of manual (internal) switching. You could use a combination of h/w (relays) and s/w (firmware) to accomplish different source switching configuration. You could for example:

-Permanently wire 1 8-channel I2S and 3 SPDIF channels to the BIII DAC and do the input switching is software.

-Switch up to 8 channels of SPDIF without external components

-Use the quantizer bit size to switch from 8 channel input to 4-channel or 2-channel input and replicate the signal to all the internal DACs without external h/w switching of the inputs (quantizer section explains how this is accomplished)

It is not the same. The new input board has 4 S/PDIF outputs unlike the old Receiver/MUX module which has only one. So the code needs some changing here in order to select the desired input (1, 2, 3 or 4), right?

Could you point me in the right direction how the I2S signal connected to the sidecar is selected? This is the bit I still don't get, but trying to.

EDIT: I know that relais need to be switched by applying 5 V to them, but how are the I2S signals routed?

Edited by user Monday, April 23, 2012 10:46:04 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Don't know for sure, but setting register 8 wouldn't hurt I guess.

Corpius, or others:

Are you intending to do m-ch w multiple inputs? I am trying to follow someone doing that. In my case I have the EXAu2i USB interface set up with a B-III. USB M-CH is fine, but I want to add additional (2-ch) sources (spdif, AES, etc). Is what you are doing applicable to this?

Thanks

For multichannel, you would want 6 or 7 bit quantizer. 8-bit will re-route half the inputs. 9-bit will reroute one-half more

Hi glt,

What I want is to be able to switch between all four spdif inputs from the "spdif 4 input board" and the Sidecare (I2S). I don't need more inputs for the moment.

I think that I understand the switching between all inputs:

To switch between one of inputs from the "spdif 4 input board":
1. Set spdif autodetect to "on" using register 17 (needs to be set to "on" to be able to set register 18)
2. Set source to SPDIF on using register 8
3. Switch to the desired input using register 18 (will not work if auto-SPDIF is off)


To switch to I2S taken from the Sidecar:
1. Set spdif autodetect to "off" using register 17
2. Set source to I2S/DSD on using register 8
3. Switch the relays on the Sidecar using 5V (blocking all spdif inputs and letting I2S signals pass through)

Can you confirm this?


btw. Is it possible to use one of the unused digital I/O's of the Arduino Uno board to switch the relays on the sidecar or is 40mA to less for this?

Edited by user Tuesday, April 24, 2012 12:32:56 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Another approach would be using a Boolean type. When switching from PCM/DSD to spdif set it to "True". Then when another sdif channel is manually selected and the Boolean type is already set to "True" the the register doesn't need to be set again.



gwikse also had this idea, but he is sure that the relays do not require much current to switch them, something in the order of a few mA. If this is true then it is possible to switch them using Arduino. Perhaps Russ or Brian can confirm this?