Advisor: Gurvinder Dubb (gurvinder.dubb@bcu.ac.uk), Yonghao Wang (yonghao.wang@bcu.ac.uk), Cham Athwal (Cham.Athwal@bcu.ac.uk)
I've identified the week 1&2 tasks for you. Hope you won't have problems with that
1. Identify two to three audio codec hardware used in recent commodity computers onboard system and plan the modular test board design by following the below requirements:
· The audio codec hardware should support the “Intel® High Definition Audio” (download.intel.com/standards/hdaudio/pdf/hda034-a2.pdf) architecture. They should be the popular chipset used in current high-end laptop or computers. The ideal codecs are:
ü ALC885 (From Realtek)
ü CS4206A (Cirrus Logic, now part of nVidia)
ü AD1984 etc (Analog Devices no longer make PC audio codec, it is now conexant seal ADI pc audio codec: http://www.conexant.com/products/entry.jsp?id=558)
· The Design should be flexible enough to swap codec boards. For example the main board to be able to send register configuration to the codec board with standard communication interfaces.
2. Identify the ready made codec demo boards to purchase in order to make some quick initial test. The codec should have similar features and technical specification to the HD Audio codec. For example: the TI PCM290x audio codec demo board: (http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/dem-pcm2902bevm.html). But one should consider how to test signal in the different stages of the signal flow in well made board.
3. Identify other testing resources such as picoScope (consult Gurvinder Dubb for further considerations).