| 1999-07-15 | Fixed mistakes and moved page (...over here /webmaster) |
| 2000-02-16 | Updated some stuff and added new material about building ADC hardware. |
| THIS PAGE WILL BE UPDATED WHEN WE HAVE MORE INFO... |
| Advanced modifications possible! |
This is a (huge) page I'm hosting for someone else. I didn't come up with all this, he did, so any and all credits must go to him! Who he is? Never mind that, read on instead!
All of the APS's IN's and OUT's CAN be accessed on the Live! Most are in digital form and require digital to analog conversion or Analog to digital conversion to be used. Read on to find out more!!!
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Document history | |
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Disclaimer - read this first | |
| EXPERIMENT AT YOUR OWN RISK.....This information is intended for EDUCATIONAL purposes only. Please realize that no matter what you do to your LIVE! you'll never create a true APS card...The APS is truely a kick ass piece of hardware!!! Know that, you will DAMAGE your SBLive if you don't know EXACTLY what your doing! This information is still in it's infancy and may contain errors. The modifications require some re-wiring and are only recommended for people with electronics experience and who can afford to experiment with or destroy there Live!. Also, you can't be sure, that it will work with next generation drivers, even if your using altered drivers. I assume no responsibility for problems that are associated with these ideas. | ||
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News | |
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New cards have been released. These are the
Player and the Platinum. There are also some other variations available
depending on where in the world you are. There are more stuff available on
this subject here.
Anyways, these new cards have replaced the older SBLive "Full"
and SBLive Value, to which the modifications in this document applies to.
So, if you have a newer card, the stuff here doesn't apply...
Also, EMU has released a statement which implies that they will support the SBLive range of cards with the 2.0 release of the APS drivers. You can read some info from NAMM about this here. When (and if) these drivers are released, there won't be any need for cracks, patches or hardware modifications anymore. |
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Tools used | |
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Introduction | |
| A friend of mine
(who I'll call Mr. X) had some interesting theories about the differences
between the SBLive! and the APS. Thank you Mr.
X...You KICK ASS!!! After
hearing his ideas, I started probing around on my SBLive! and comparing
notes with Mr. X . In time, we found the following information.....
You may have noticed that not all strips are accessible in the APS mixer. WHY? Well, If you look in the APS mixer under Help\About, you'll see that the Multi-output card (MOC) is reported as "NOT connected". And, depeneding on your card, may show that the Edrive is NOT connected as well. Note, that the Edrive.. IS.. reported as "connected" if you have a SBLIVE Full with the IO card attached. It turns out that on the Live's 10k1 chip, there are pins that can be pulled high or low, that enable or disable the Edrive and MOC functionality in the APS mixer. With Moc and Edrive Functionality enabled, you will find all of the APS's In\Out signals on your Live!. IMPORTANT NOTE: All new In's \ Out's are in digital form except Analog out 7&8. Setting the APS Main output strip to "Analog Out 7&8" will send all sounds to the "rear out" connector on your card - giving you analog output. So all other new-found IO's will require an ADC or a DAC. We'll discuss A to D \ D to A conversions later. |
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Enabling your Live! for MOC and Edrive Functionality | |
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| NEW! There is
now a patch available that will have the same effect as this hardware mod.
This patch can be found at the usual places... This stuff is still here
for reference.
Live! Value
Live! Full
Live! Full 2
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Where to find the ins and outs | |
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| Once you Enable the
Edrive and MOC you'll have access to ALL of the audio signals (IN's and
OUT's) that the APS has to offer. Most of these are in digital
form and require an analog conversion in order to be used. Note however,
that setting the APS mixer's "MAIN" output strip to Analog
out 7&8 will send all audio to SPDIFO#3 which is already
connected to a DAC and routed to your REAR output channel on your SBLive! So
you will get analog out without re-wiring any audio signals!!!
And you'll still have normal SBLive! driver functionality - i.e. 4 speaker
out EAX gaming. Note: there may be a minor issues involving the use of
this output. Read the "interesting facts" section below.
ALL of the Input and Output ports below, have been verified and .....THEY ALL WORK !!! In the Future, we'll try to provide more info about good soldering locations on the value, you should not solder directly to the 10K1 !!!! ...NOTE: As with the true APS... Digital out 2 and Analog Out 3&4 share the same channel and cannot be used simultaneously!
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ADC and DAC information | |
| The COOOL thing is
that we finally have access to ALL of the INPUTS that the APS has to
offer. Soon there will be more info about building an ADC\DAC interface
that you can make yourself. It will probably use the same Crystal
ADC's that the APS uses found at http://www.cirrus.com/products/overviews/cs5334.html
, part number CS5335) . The IC's are around $10.00 per chip and are
ordered through various distributers. See http://www.cirrus.com/corporate/contacts/
and download the sales contact PDF file. If the distributer won't let you
buy just a few chips, you'll have to place a large order or....state that
you work for some local electronics company and request some samples for
FREE. Each CS5335 provides a stereo analog input and an i2s (Inter IC
Sound) output, which is what we need to "talk" to our
digital inputs.
Working with CS5335 i2s signals: i2s uses 4 basic signals to communicate: SDATA, LRCK, SCLK and MCLK. The SDATA signal contains repeating 20 bit digital strings of data that represents audio at some point in time. There are also 8 bit for "peak signal level". The LRCK (left\right clock) is used to alternately select which channel (left or right) that data is read from, or written to, in the SDATA stream. Note: LRCK and FRAME can both be set to 48 KHz for us. The SCLK is the clock for the serial data, we'll probably use the 48KHz*64 = 3.072 MHz that is on-board the Live!. MCLK (not shown in figure) is the master clock for the converters. We can use the 12MHz clock that is available to us on the Live! for the Master Clock. If this sounds complicated, keep in mind, that after I new what to do, it only took me 10 minutes to connect and test my i2s input on Analog 1&2. Please refer to the CS5335 PDF file at www.crystal.com for more detailed info. I won't be too specific until I actually finish building\testing my converters. Click here to see a figure on I2S communication |
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Important pins on the Emu 10k1 | |
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| NEW Here's
a picture showing the pinout of the EMU10k1 chip.
The chart below might be redundant but is useful especially for Value owners. Since you don't have the digital IO card, you can see the value's "equivalent pins" to the Live! full's digital IO board connections. Then you can confirm the Resistive loads (if present), and make your connections with confidence. I've found that both my SBLive value and SBLive Full are almost identical aside from a suspected "card type identification EEPROM" and some missing IO board connector circuitry on the Value. Figure 3, (above) shows the 10K1's pin orientation...have fun counting without a Magnifying glass ;-)
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ADC projects | |
| Below are 2 schematics. One for building (2) stereo analog-to-i2s converters to use for ANALOG IN 1&2 and ANALOG IN 3&4. The other is for building a stereo analog-to-i2s-to-spdif converter to interface with the didgital IN's D1 and D2. Thanks Maneco Sónico for your work. See Crystal Semiconductor's PDF document for more info on these circuits. For SBLive FULL owners, it is easiest to build the circuit for Analog IN 3&4 since this converter is ran in master mode and produces it's own timing from the 24 MHz clock from the SBLive Full's IO board. More importantly, all of it's connections can be found on the IO card (see the IO card pin out above for those connections..pins 4 , 35, 37, and 39 are all you need). For value owners, you'll need to hunt for the pads that correspond to these 10k1 pins. I didn't use the supply circuit (bottom) or the 7454 buffer (right) from this design and I haven't seen any problems on Analog IN 3&4. Analog 1&2 (which I haven't successfully built yet) may need them how ever. Check out crystal's 5331 PDF file for more info on this circuit ....as well as a clear schematic. I'll try to post a photo of my board in the next update. I've move the IO card to a front bay like the Edrive. The bay has 1/4 inch analog inputs for Analog IN 3&4 as well as all of the normal IO card inputs, spdif IO, midi IO ... etc. | ||
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Interesting facts / issues (outdated) | |
Stuff I've noticed
since enabling the MOC:
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Conclusion | |
| It appears that the
Live! and APS are more alike than we thought! Can you imagine what
Creative could do with this card if they wanted to? Oh well, for now we'll
keep working on our home-made IO devices. Personally, I'm going to work
toward interfacing all 4 Analog IN's, all 8 Analog OUT's and all digital
ports in a single box. More information and hopefully a cleaner-shorter
procedure to come soon! Please share any new ideas, interface designs and
problems with us.
PS : Please, don't burn your Live up!.....or your house down.....it'll make us look bad! ;-) |
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Helpful links | |
| Crystal
Devices - DAC's and ADC's
Fortune City - Origional Rewire info Excellent Resource - pinouts and more |
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The
Live Value can be altered to enable the Edrive and MOC as shown
below in Figure 1. Here you'll solder one connection across
two 18K resistors and one capacitor. This will pull the two
resistors R79 and R81 to the same 3.3V supply for the EMU 10K1 chip
(found on C94). These resistors are connected to pins 110 (enable
MOC) and 112 (enable edrive) on the EMU 10k1 chip. Remember
to check your work before powering up! There are alot of
small ground pads that you might accidentally short to. The
connections you are making are directly connected to the EMU10k1
chip (pin 110 and 112) and should NOT be
shorted to GROUND! See figure 1 to verify where ground
SHOULD be found.
When
the Digital IO card is connected to the Live Full, the IO card's
built in circuitry already pulls the "Edrive" pin high,
thus enabeling all Edrive-related strips in the APS mixer. The MOC
can also be enabled by making a minor alteration on the IO board. On
the IO board's connector:
Someone
thought of an easier way to enable the MOC on the Live! full, by
modifying the IO cable. Any IDE Hard Drive cable should work (See
the picture of the 40 pin cable below) . First, strip a small
section of pin 23's wire (or melt insulator with soldering iron).
Then, cut pin 24's wire asshown below. Then solder the sound
card end of pin 24's wire to the exposed 23's wire, leaving
the other end of pin 24's wire open (not
connected). Now, cover your work with tape or something to avoid the
wires contacting ground (your computer case). Make sure you check
your work and connect the cable as shown in the pic...IO card should
connect to the end which has pin 24's wire OPEN.
