Antex electronics SX-34 manual

SX-5e SX-6 SX-34 SX-36 Digital Audio Adapter User's Manual September 17, 1999 Rev. E A NTE X ELEC TRON ICS CORP ORA TION 1125 W. 190 th STREET GARDENA , CA LIFORNIA 90248 info@antex.com www.a n te x .c om Toll Free: 1-800-338-4231 Fax: 310-532-8509 9000-2351-7006[...]

Declaration of Conformity Standards to which Conformity is Declared: EN55022 (Class A) 1994, EN 50082-1 1992 This equipm ent has been v erified to comply w ith the limits for a class A computing device, pursuant to FCC Rules. I n order to m aintain compliance with FCC regulations, shielded cables must be used with this equipm ent. Operation with no[...]

TA BLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1 CARD INSTALL ATION ............................................................. 1 JUM PER SE TTINGS & CON NECTIONS ...................... 2 I/O ADDRESSES AND INTERRUPTS .......................... 3 MA KING CONN ECTIONS TO THE CAR D ........[...]

SX-34 M IXER AN D BLOC K DIAGRA M ......................... 34 SX-6 M IXER AN D BLOCK DIAGRAM........................... 36 SX-5e M IXER AN D BLOC K DIAGRA M ......................... 39 ANTEX M ETER ........................................................................ 42 TROUBL ESHOOTIN G ........................................................[...]

FIGURES Figure 1 . SX-5e,6,34 ,35 & SX-36 Ju mper Setti ngs................... 2 Figure 2. SX-35/36 Connections.............................................. 5 Figure 3. SX-34 Connections................................................... 8 Figure 4. SX-6 Connections..................................................... 11 Figure 5. Antex Demo P[...]

1 INTRODUCTION The Antex SX-5e, SX-6, SX -34 and SX-36 f amily of cards are I SA bus audio “add-in” cards f or the PC. T hey all incorporate DSP’s (Digital Sig nal Processors), which allow the cards to do a variety of audio format s. (MPEG, PCM16, M SADPCM, etc.) All cards ar e dual device, w hich means they can operate on 2 hard drive files [...]

2 Set the board number with jumpers as shown below. If only one board is being used, leave the jum pers off (sets to board number one). W hen using more than one car d in a computer , each board must be given a diff erent number by setting the jumpers dif fer- ently on each card. Any model Antex Card may be used with any other model Antex Card. All[...]

3 I/O A DDRESSES AND INT ERRUPTS SX-5e, 6, 34, 35 & 36 I/O addresses and in terrupts are soft ware selectable. The vali d I/O addresses are: 180h, 220h, 280h, 300h, 320h and 380h The valid interrupts ar e: 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11 and 12 Note that interrupts 3 and 4 ar e normally used by the computer’s COM ports and w ill not be available. The inte[...]

4 balanced connections and shielded coax cable for unbalanced connections. See the section “Balanced and Unbalanced Sig- nals”.[...]

5 SX-35/36 CONNECTOR DESCRI PTIO N JP1 SX-35/36 JP4 JP7 JP8 JP9 BALANCED IN/O UT JP3 Pin As signm ent 1G r o u n d 2 Righ t In - 3L e f t I n - 4R i g h t O u t - 5L e f t O u t - 6 Righ t In + 7 Left In + 8R i g h t O u t + 9L e f t O u t + DB-9 Fema le Bala nced Anal og I /O Connec tor 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 SX-35/36 Balanced I/O to XL R 1 2 3 4 5 6 7[...]

6 LINE I/0 (JP8) Pin 1 Right Line Input + Pin 3 Right Line Input - Pin 5 Left Line I nput + Pin 7 Left Line I nput - Pin 9 Right Line Out put + Pin 11 Right Line Out put - Pin 13 Left Line O ut put + Pin 15 Left Line O ut put - Pin 2,4,6,8,10, 12,14,16 Ground This connector duplicat es the function of the DB9 connector. It might be used with a cust[...]

7 A UX IN (JP9) Pin 1 Right Aux Input + Pin 3 Right Aux Input - Pin 5 Left Aux Input + Pin 7 Left Aux Input - Pin 9,11,13,15 No connection Pin 2,4,6,8,10, 12,14,16 Ground The Auxiliary inputs are balanced inputs, t he same as the Line In and can be used in the same way; as a record source or analog feed-t hr oug h to the Line Out. MIC (JP7) Pin 1 M[...]

8 SX-34 CONNECTOR DESCRIPTIO N JP5 LINE IN MIC SX-34 A UX LINE OUT JP6 JP7 JP4 JP1 Figure 3. SX-34 Connecti ons 1. SPx Header - JP1 JP1 is a 40-pin, dual-row, 2m m spaced header the provides connections for an SPx module. 2. Output Header - JP5 JP5 is a 5-pin, 0.100" spaced header that provides connec- tions for t he left and rig ht output sig[...]

9 3. A UX Header - JP6 JP6 is a 5-pin, 0.100" spaced header that provides connec- tions for left and right auxiliary input signals. T hese are the same connections provided by the AUX jack on the bracket. Signals present at JP6 are switched in only when there is no plug in the AUX j ack. 1 5 Ground Left In p ut Ri g ht In p ut Ground Ground 4.[...]

10 5. Mono Header - JP4 JP4 is a 2-pin, 0.100" spaced header that provides a mono in- put connection. This input is not currently supported. 1 Ground Mono In p ut 2[...]

11 SX-6 CONNECTOR DESCRIPTIO N JP1 SX-6 JP4 JP2 BALANCED OUT JP3 Pin Ass ignment 1 Ground 2n c 3n c 4 Right Out - 5 Left Ou t - 6n c 7n c 8 Right Out + 9 Left Ou t + DB- 9 Femal e Balanced A nalog I /O C onnect or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 SX-6 Balanced I/O to X LR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Right Balanced Out - XLR female shell, male pins 1 1 Left - 2 + 3 - 2 + 3 [...]

12 LINE OU T (JP2 ) Pin 1,3,5,7 No connection Pin 9 Right Line Ou t + Pin 11 Right Line Ou t – Pin 13 Left Line O ut + Pin 15 Left Line O ut – Pin 2,4,6,8,10, 12,14,16 Ground This connector duplicat es the function of the DB9 connector. It might be used with a custom “Indust rial Rack Mount PC” with a special cable harness that broug ht the[...]

13 SX-5e CONNECTOR DESCRIPTIO N The SX-5e is self -explanatory. The lef t and right Line O ut con- nections are RCA jack s on the card bracket, which are labeled. There are no other connect ors on the card. BA LANCED A ND UNBA LA NCED SIGNALS The SX-5e and the SX-34 have unbalanced signals only. T he SX-6 and SX- 36 have balanced signals, which can[...]

14 Antex cards are “active”; t ransform ers are not used. Normally, one should not ground t he out put of an active driver. However the drivers used on the Antex cards are specifically desig ned to do this and behave identically to a transf ormer. The m ain difference between grounding or not grounding the minus output is t hat grounding the ou[...]

15 This is because the input am plifier stag es of the card have been overloaded. Also, recording from a source with too low a signal level, such as plugging a microphone directly into a line level in- put, will result in a very noisy recording. G ood signal to noise perform ance can only be achieved by using a record source with suff icient signal[...]

16 externally, there must be 2 car ds installed in t he computer , so that there is one physical output f or each device. COMPRESSIO N, DAT A RA TES, A ND NETWORKS The amount of data (the size) of a sound file is af fected by several factor s. The most obvious is the sample rate. A file recorded at 22.05 KHz w ill take up half as much disk space as[...]

17 a file, but no fading. Some audio editing program s do edit MPEG files, but they actually convert the file to PCM16 f irst, and t hen convert it back ag ain after editing. This has t w o problems. First, it is slow, and second, each time the conversion is done, the sound quality is degraded. MPEG is only valid for 32, 44.1 and 48 KHz. M PEG requ[...]

18 tained for a given output bitrate ther efore changes with sample rate. In the Antex software the bit rate is specified on a per-c hannel ba- sis. Theref ore, requesting 64 kbit s/s and stereo will result in a 128 kbits/s com pressed MPEG stream. Supported bitrates (per channel) and compression rat ios are as f ollows: Layer I 32 KHz 44.1 KHz 48 [...]

19 DRIVE R INST A LLA T ION WINDOWS 95 1. Aft er inst alling the card, power up the system. 2. Open Contro l Panel- Add New Hardware applet. 3. Press “Next”. 4. Select “No”. Pr ess “ Next”. 5. Select “Sound, video and game cont rollers”. Pr ess “ Next”. 6. Select “Have Disk”. 7. Insert supplied dr iver diskette int o t he A:[...]

20 5. Sele ct “Driver” ta b. 6. Select antexwav.vxd, click on “Change Driver”. 7. Select "Have Disk" 8. Point to locat ion of driver files. Click “OK” . Click “OK” . 9. Select antex.drv, click on “Change Driver”. 10. Select "Have Disk" 11. Point to locat ion of driver files. Click “OK” . Click “OK” . [...]

21 8. Make sure “Search f or a better driver…” is select ed. 9. Select the location of the new driver. 10. Click “Next” . Click “Next”. Click “Next”. Click “OK”. 11. Point to location of driver files ag ain. 12. Click “O K”. Click “ Finish”. 13. Click “Yes” t o r eboot the computer. WINDOW S NT 1. After inst alling[...]

22 A NTE X A PPLIC A TION SOF TWA RE IN STA LLA T ION The Antex Demo, Mixer, and Meter program s ar e on a separate floppy disk. T he same disk is used f or W indows 95/98 and NT. The soft ware installs in the usual manner. 1. Insert the disk into the f loppy drive. 2. From the “Star t ” menu, select “Run”. 3. On the command line, t ype “[...]

23 USING WI NDO WS DEMONSTRAT IO N SO FTWARE Figure 5. Antex Demo Program The Antex Demo prog ram allows basic recording and playback of .W AV f iles in any of the compression f ormats available on the Antex audio board you have installed in your system. Sample R ate This list box selects specif ic sample rates f or recor ding, and displays the sam[...]

24 Compression: This list box selects specific compression formats for re- cording, and displays the compressed form at of the f ile currently playing. Not e that the Sample Rate and Com- pression for recording can only be changed when the card is in “Stop” mode. If the card is in “Paused Record”, or is recording, the Sam ple Rate or Compre[...]

25 Channels: These buttons select mono or stereo r ecording, and dis- play the number of channels of the current f ile. VU Meters : The VU meters show the relative signal level of the current file that is being recorded or played. Wave Devi ce: If your driver is configured f or dual devices or your com- puter has more t han one Antex audio board, t[...]

26 File: This button select s a filename f or recording or playback. Once this button has been pressed the dialog box in Figure 7 will appear. I f you hold down the “Alt” k ey while clicking on File, the dialog box shown below in Figure 8 will appear. This will allow you to select auto-repeat for play- ing back a f ile, or r ecording f or a pre[...]

27 Volume: These controls allow changing the volume of the playback only. INSTA LLING AND USING MULTIPLE CARDS IN A SYSTEM W hen using mor e than one card in a system, each card must have a diff erent adapter number. This is set by using t he jumpers on top of the card. The Antex Driver must be set up t o have a diff erent Address and Interr upt fo[...]

28 Simultaneous Record and Playback MPEG MSADPCM PCM16 SX-34 No 22.05 KHz 48 KHz SX-35 No 22.05 KHz 48 KHz SX-36 32 KHz 32 KHz 48 KHz Dual Device Playback MPEG MSADPCM PCM16 SX-5e 48 KHz 32 KHz 48 KHz SX-6 48 KHz 32 KHz 48 KHz SX-34 44.1 KHz 32 KHz 48 KHz SX-35 44.1 KHz 32 KHz 48 KHz SX-36 48 KHz 44.1 KHz 48 KHz MIXER AND BLOCK DIA GRAMS The purpos[...]

29 and right channels of a ster eo sig nal. Also, only one r ecord device is shown. The small circles with a letter inside cor respond be- tween the M ixer Diagram and t he Block Diagram . For example, refer ring to the SX -36 diagram s, the Line In On/ Off control, la- beled “G” in the Mixer Diagram , is showing that when this cont rol is “O[...]

30 “Radio pushbutton” controls G, H, I, and J determine the recor d source. Only one button on at a time is allowed. It may seem strange that button J will set the record source to Line Out . This is done to allow the use of att enuators C, D, or E t o control the record level. Using Line Out as the record source will also allow you to record a[...]

31 down if the output signal f rom the Ant ex card is too loud. One ex- ception to setting both sliders at maximum is when playing 2 files simultaneously. In this case, it may be necessary to lower the sliders slightly to prevent clipping from occurring when peak s of both files occur at the same time. Not e that this is a subjective concept; how m[...]

32 L K A A B C D E G H I J Figure 9. SX-36 Mi xer[...]

33 Figure 10. SX-36 Block Di agram[...]

34 SX-34 MIXER AND BLOCK DIAGRA M The SX-34 diagrams are the same as t he SX-36, with the excep- tion that the SX -34 does not have the Input or Out put Tr im Con- trols. C D E G H I K L Figure 11. SX-34 Mi xer[...]

35 Figure 12. SX-34 Block Di agram[...]

36 SX-6 MIXER AND BLOCK DIAGRA M Output Tr im Control B det ermines the level of the output sig nal on Line Out which corresponds to dig ital clipping. I f t he contr ol is set to +8, the maximum output signal level is +8 dBu. If the contr ol is set to +20, the m aximum output signal level is +20dBu. Note that these signal levels correspond to bala[...]

37 M L B K Figure 13. SX-6 Mi xer[...]

38 Figure 14. SX-6 Block Di agram[...]

39 SX-5e MIXER AND BLOCK DIAGRA M Due to the simplicity of the SX-5e, t he Antex Mix er does not add control of any features that are not accessible throug h the Antex Demo. The Play 1 and Play 2 Sliders duplicate the f unct ion of t he sliders in the Antex Demo prog ram. K L Figure 15. SX-5e Mi xer Play 1 and Play 2 Sliders, K, and L control the l[...]

40 and controlling t he volume using t he mast er volume cont rol on the external amplifier or mixing board the Antex Card is connect ed to. One exception to setting both sliders at maximum is when playing 2 files simultaneously. In this case, it may be necessary to lower the sliders slightly to prevent clipping f rom occurring when peaks of both f[...]

41 Figure 16. SX-5e Block Di agram[...]

42 ANTEX METE R The figur e below shows a typical Antex Meter window . This can be opened by running “meter .exe” or double-clicking on the meter icon. The size of the window can be changed by drag ging the side, bottom or corner of the window. The meter is sim ilar to the meter in the Ant ex Mix er or Antex Demo, but is much more f lexi- ble. [...]

43 If you rig ht - click or double-click on the meter window , t he following window w ill pop-up: Figure 18. Antex Meter pull-dow n menu[...]

44 Clicking on “O ptions” will open the following window: Figure 19. Antex Meter options “Visible Lines” allows you to select which devices have VU meters displayed. “Mode” allows you to select whether the meter is peak r eading or averaging (VU) . “Peak Hold Level” will keep the peak level lit for t he time indicated. “Headroom I[...]

45 “Meter Update Interval” determ ines how often the meter pr ogram reads the level data f rom the Antex Card. Not e that even if the meter is in peak mode, peaks which occur in between the update intervals will be missed. To avoid this, the update inter v al should be 5 ms or less. Once the meter is set the way y ou want, you can save and reca[...]

46 TROU BLESH OOTING I get an error message when tryi ng to run the Antex Demo program. 1. Card did not in stall correc tly beca use of an I/O or in terrupt conflict. I n W in NT, g o to “Start ” , “Settings” , “Control Panel”, “Multimedia”, “Devices”, “Audio Devices”, “ Audio for Antex Digital Audio Driver” , “Setting[...]

47 Files I record sound “dull ”. 1. Use a higher sample rat e. Lower sample rates reduce the high fr equency content, mak ing recording s sound dull. There is a lot of noi se or hum, even when t he Antex Card is idle. 1. There may be a wiring problem. Make sure the shields are grounded, especially with unbalanced connections. Don’t run cables[...]

48 too hot. T o see if this is t he problem, does the Line O ut sound distorted when just listening to the record sour ce as a feed- through? Files recorded are of poor quali t y. 1. Some formats, bit rates, and sample rat es do not sound as good as others. PCM8 should not be used. It is pr ovided only for back ward compatibility. Record PCM16 at 4[...]

49 • If using several cards in a system, try just playing one f ile on one card. If this solves the problem , your system may not be fast enough to handle as many cards and files at once as y ou want. Using compressed f ile for mats will re- duce the amount of data required by each card. TECHNICA L/ORDERI NG INFORM A TION: If you have any questio[...]

50 A PPENDIX Connectors for Male Headers For connecting to the auxiliary connectors on the Ant ex Card, there are 2 types of connectors to use. O ne type is the individual crimp type, such as the Molex C-Grid series. For single r ow headers, the part number would be 50-57-900X, where X is t he number of cont acts. For dual row headers, the par t nu[...]

51 milliwatt into 600 ohms, which is .775 volts RMS. dBV uses 1 volt RMS as the reference. Digital Clipping Digital clipping is the point where the Analog to Digit al converter becomes saturated. The signal is “ all ones”. For a 16 bit system, this is a v alue of +32768 or –32768. Dig ital clipping sounds nas- tier than analog clipping becaus[...]

52 Specificati ons Unless otherwise noted, THD+N and Dynamic Rang e measure- ments are done at 1KHz, A w eight ing, 48 KHz sample rate. Maximum input and output levels are for dig ital full scale. A ll Cards (as appl i cabl e): Sample rates ............................ 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 44.1, 48 KHz Frequency Response ..........................[...]

53 SX-34: THD+N ........................................................................... .02% max Dynami c Range ............................................................... 80dB min Line Out leve l .................................................................... 1V RM S Line Out load impedance (90Hz to 20KHz, -3dB) .........8 ohms min Li[...]

54 SX-5e: THD+N ................................................................................... .02% Dynami c Range ............................................................... 85dB min Line Out leve l ..................................................................... 2VRM S Line Out output impedance.......................................[...]

55 In essence, digital audio is a t echnological process whereby an analog audio signal (pr oduced when sound waves in the air excite a microphone) is first converted into a continuous stream of num- bers (or dig its). Once in dig ital form , the signal is extremely im- mune to degradation caused by system noise or defects in the storage or transmi[...]

56 Figure 20. Analog-to-Digital To visualize the analog-to-dig ital conversion process, r efer to Figure 20. At the top is one cycle of an analog input signal wave. W e've used a simple sine wave to make visualization easier. In this example, the sig nal has a peak-t o-peak amplit ude of 20 units, measured by the scale on the lef t. The sampli[...]

57 Digital-t o-analog conv ersion (used in playback) is the exact oppo- site of the analog -to dig ital conversion process and is illustrat ed in Figure 21. In digital- to-analog conversion, the PCM bitstr eam is converted at the sampling f requency to a continuously changing series of quantization levels which are individual "steps" of d[...]

58 The for egoing is a very brief and, of necessity, oversimplif ied ex- planation of how digital audio work s. For the interest ed reader, the book Principles of Digital Audio by Ken C. Pohlmann, copy- right 1985 by Howard W . Sam s, is highly recommended.[...]