Russ,

About one year ago there was info on the DIY board that you are preparing a multichannel version of the dac. Is there a chance to see it soon?

Power to you!

Here is the thing. I could design a PCB very easily based on the current buf-II. It would be simple. But Honestly we only have so much capacity right now. So I am trying to prioritize things. Brian is an awesome guy. He works way beyond the call of duty. I just am trying to keep things manageable right now. Let me talk it over with him and we will together decide if it is something we can squeeze in between everything else.

Edited by user Sunday, August 1, 2010 7:33:46 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I may do it at some point, but I actually don't have that much interest in because once you use the ES9018 with only one differential DAC per output channel performance wise (DNR and THD) the DAC really becomes not much better than anything else out there. Really to get exceptional performance you have to use it in 1 or 2 channel mode.

You can very easily do a superb multi-channel DAC with the Buffalo II. Just use more than one buff II module (3 or 4 for 5.1 or 7.1 respectively). Then you get multi channel with no compromise in results compared to stereo.

Edited by user Tuesday, December 21, 2010 10:16:55 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Can the Buffalo 2 be modified to support more than two I2S addresses?

I2S does not have adresses. Do you mean i2C?

Each DAC can only have one of two I2C addresses for control, but you can very easily use more than one bus. :)

It knows because it is input via I2S. :)

You would need to pull the I2S from a decoder of some sort.

Something like this (would need to be hacked a bit)
http://www.allaboutadapters.com/hddodtsdihdo.html

I have been thinking of hacking one of these just for fun. Most all blu-ray players can be set to do LPCM output for all channels.

- I2S is only 2 channel. For 8 channel, you need 4 I2S sources
- Buffalo II is only stereo or mono, so it can only take one I2S source. In mono, you connect the single source to both DACs
- Multichannel I2S? I don't know. There maybe hdmi or spdif to I2S converters out there but I haven't looked
- To connect one spdif to two Buffalo II Dacs, you daisy chain: spdif input and comparator ON on DAC 1, take the signal from D1 and connect to D1 in DAC2 with comparator off
- For multichannel spdif you will need a decoder first (like a DTS or Dolby decoder?) But I don't know how the DAC handles multi-channel SPDif (I would like to know too)

Hope this helps

Thanks all for the information.
I don't want to use I2S for long runs, i want an usb input to the dac with just one coneverter to I2S directly coupled to the buffalo dac, so I2S line less than 2 centimeters.
Ok, the idea is to have two or three spdif or I2S lines out from USB and pro soundcards have that.
Now I need to find a cheap usb or firewire soundcard with two or three digital out. If it has spdif, it would be possible to hack them to have I2S before the two or three spdif conversions. This seems interesting only if the converter has really clean I2S as shown by the work of glt, until that (that is hack precise clocks to the converter) it should be good enough to stick with spdif.
Another solution would be to use three usb->spdif like for three modded hiface with one buffalo for each. Then we need to aggregate the three hiface as one soundcard on the computer (easily done on mac).