Stereo_Electronics

Watt magazine gives the iPHONO 6 stars (Top Score)! In the first part of the PDF Roy Ervin Solstad writes that ifi Micro is from a new company using the technology from the English high-end company Abbingdon Music Research (AMR). “AMR PH-77 is often recognized as one of the best phono-equalisers in the world.” “First of all it is very fun to listen to. The dynamics is impressive and you can easy listen within the most complex parts of pieces of music….Kari Bremnes sounds like Kari Bremnes and not like Twiggy or Aretha Franklin….The best thing with this amplifier is that it does not do a few things very good, while other parts of the sound reproduction suffer. Conclusion: If there is an absolute no-brainer among phono-equalisers in today’s market, it must be the IFI iPhono. It would be a bargain even at a double price. Run out and buy before the manufacturer discover (that the price is much to low.)" WE LIKE: Incredible flexible – Excellent sound – Price WE DON´T LIKE: Absolutely nothing WATT THINKS: This phono-equaliser has a sound and a price that makes it a coup (a bargain). In Watt the best products get 6 stars; iPhono got 6 stars." Special thanks to Watt Magazine (Nr), Audio Aktøren (iFi: Norway) and Roy Ervin Solstad!

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The R&D team asked us to update you: - testing pretty much complete - all the really difficult stuff in software control works a treat - just a few minor bugs to squash... From the production dept: i) Early July - the micro iDSD ships out ii) Mid-July - in store and available for pickup (around the world simultaneously.) We shall update with the global launch date once we know when all our major retailers are likely to them in store. So no major delays of months or anything. Full speed ahead! cont'd iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Super Duper feature 2.1: The CCK/OTG port High-Fidelity on the go! (page 67) - Page 63

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iFi nailed it: Customer Michael’s words about the Nano iDSD! “The iDSD DAC uses a Burr Brown DAC which handles PCM and DSD close to their own terms….iFi also provides everything you need to get going including a USB cable, RCAs, and a small travel pouch. Nice. But all of that doesn’t add up to a hill of beans if the iFi iDSD DAC doesn’t make music worth listening to. Luckily for us lascivious music listeners and lovers, it sure does….the iFi iDSD DAC announced itself with a nice, rich, round sound. It offered a lovely dimensional quality to the music it reproduced that I’ve come to associate with a handful of mostly more expensive DACs….There was a consistent, rich, warm, lively, and inviting sound with the iDSD DAC that led me from album to album, as opposed to track to track, or even worse part-of-a-track to part-of-a-track. The iFi engendered the kind of listening that is driven by musical joy….I’d say iFi nailed this one.” Thanks very much for the review Michael Lavorgna of Audiostream.com! Cont'd: iFi nano iDSD DAC/Headphone Amp | AudioStream

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micro iDSD: Outta This World #2: Perfect Match with Power Modes and iEMatch. Background In any audio system, the matching between the amplifier and the transducers is arguably the most crucial. In the loudspeaker market, speaker + amplifier matching is typically well-matched. i.e. low-powered amplifiers are paired with high-efficiency speakers and vice versa. HOWEVER, in the headphone market, the gamut of headphones paired with headphone amplifiers is very inconsistent. This often leads to poor-matching from not enough power to drive headphones (typically: unimpressive sonics) to far too much power to drive in-ears (typically: unusable volume control + excessive hiss). Explanation In the headphone market, we went through virtually every current production headphone out there and what we found shocked us. Running the ruler over current production headphones, we found that there is a massive 53dB difference between the most efficient In-Ear-Monitors (IEMs) and the most inefficient headphones. This is an absolutely enormous range (think of this as the difference in loudness between a disco and a quiet library so this is NOT subtle.) At one end of the spectrum is the HiFi Man HE-6 which is as hungry as things go. Rated at 90dB/V, this “Hummer” of a headphone needs well over 3,000mW to drive properly to good levels. Let’s categorise these as low-efficiency headphones. BTW, for the K1000 die-hards out there, it is the "Mack juggernaut" as it is rated crazily low at 84dB/V!!! At the other end of the spectrum are super-efficient IEMs. The Sennheiser IE800 is rated at 143dB/V and even driven by the iPhone’s paltry 15mW, you can only dial-up to 50% of its digital volume before it starts to encroach upon ear-damaging levels! Let’s categorise these as ultra-sensitive IEMs. It is not surprising to find that we had yet to come across a headamp that can deal with this gamut let alone a DAC headamp that is portable that can deal with this full spectrum of headphones! :regular_smile : Note: dB/mW cannot be compared directly, we have normalised all headphone sensitivities to 1V signal, which is close to the maximum output of an iPhone, incidentally. How best to consider the max power output and the perfect headphone pairing? The micro iDSD has max power output of 4000mW. The Porsche 911 Turbo S, has a maximum power output of 560bhp. To put all that power down onto the tarmac and to ensure that it grips the road to very best ability of the driver’s demands, it has Sport Plus/Sport/Comfort (see Sport buttons below). To zero-in that perfect-setup, the Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control (see PDCC button below) further fine tunes the whole of the car’s drivetrain to ensure maximum grip. The micro iDSD has Turbo/Normal/Eco and in conjunction with iEMatch, the listener is able to dial-in the IEM/headphone used. Unleash the beast! (we mean the micro iDSD + your headphones, not the 911 Turbo!) How does this benefit the listener? OTW #2 is the perfect-match of headphones with the micro iDSD. For the very first time ever, from the Sennheiser IE800 > HiFi Man HE-6, the listener is able to “dial-in” the perfect match using a combination of the micro iDSD’s Power Modes + iEMatch. For example: HE-6: Power mode = Turbo and iEMatch = Off IE800: Power mode = Eco and iEMatch = Ultra-Sensitivity These are of course, the two polar opposites so with any other headphone or in-ear-monitor, then adjust the different settings under Power mode + iEMatch to suit. cont'd iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Super Duper feature 2.0: XBass, the Ace of Bass (page 65) - Page 60

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micro iDSD: Software Design Notes (4) DSD – No ordinary DSD The recent discussion about chipsets and what constitutes what prompted us to bring in part 4 of the Software Design Notes. (also the AudioStream interview is quite heavy going as Thorsten does like the details). Mainly - why we chose the Burr-Brown and use an analogue volume control (we avoided using a digital volume control). There is DSD playback and DSD by iFi which we believe is different. We are really pleased with our DSD implementation - it really is quite one of the most original DSD implementations out there. At the core, no data conversion and manipulation is done INSIDE this chip, so the DSD data is preserved Bit-Perfectly. An analogue filter is applied to the DSD data before it is sent to the output stage. For us, "doing digital" means keeping the signal path original as much as possible; ideally from the ADC being DSD kept through to DAC being DSD (the same of course goes for PCm which we will cover later). But in the case of the nano iDSD and micro iDSD, we have this: Therefore, when playing back an originally-recorded DSD file through this Burr-Brown chipset on the iDSD, the listener has ensured that the WHOLE ADC > DAC path has remained native” in its DSD format. Like this: The DSD chip we use is under full software control in order to gain access to many “undocumented features” (yes, they all have them). What are those “undocumented features”, we will announce them (a few should be a world’s first) closer to when we officially launch the micro iDSD. Compared to the lion’s share of DSD-capable chips out there, most of them perform data conversion and manipulation of the DSD data and hence are no longer Bit-Perfect. This maybe the designer's choice, which is very much their prerogative but for us, we just about make it our mission to avoid such conversion processes. Why? - conversion from one format to another is lossy. Hence to us, this is best avoided as much as possible. What is the giveaway? If they do digital volume control on the DSD stream, this is very likely to convert the DSD data into NON-DSD data (does not necessary mean that they are converting into PCM, but converting into something non-DSD at the very least). Even Pro Audio Studios use DAWs that convert Pyramix do not even pretend to use DSD, in their DAW any processing means the DSD signal is converted to DXD (24Bit/352.8KHz) and processed as this, then converted back to DSD. And Sonoma converts to DSD wide (aka PCM narrow), then applies a 24Bit scaling factor, ending up with 32PCM which is then converted back to DSD (remodulated from PCM). It means that any processing of DSD in either Sonoma or Pyramix converts DSD to a form of PCM. Only "Tape Splice" (this refers to physically cutting the old magnetic tape and splicing two different tapes together) style edits can be done while retaining DSD. If these VERY expensive DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) music recording/production packages cannot fade/volume control DSD without turning it to PCM, this begs the question of how come mainstream and far less costly commodity DAC's chipsets can? This comes full circle back to why we selected the Burr-Brown chipset AND central to this why we use an analogue volume control (which yes, also has its issues but to us, these are far less sonically-damaging). cont'd: iDSD micro Crowd-Design. OTW#2 Perfect-Match with Power modes+iEMatch! (page 60) - Page 56

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Crowd-Design: Power Supply (i) The Meaty Monster is Power Mad! The power supply is the heart of every audio device. It provides the power which is modulated into audio signals. One just cannot take too much care to the power supply. Within the breast of the beast that is the "Meaty Monster" beats two hearts. And they beat very, very fast. And they draw their power from one of the biggest batteries found in any portable audio device. A. The poor old standard 500mA USB port … In the micro iDSD, we need a lot of power, to produce one of the most powerful headphone amplifiers fitted to ANY DAC/Headamp, never mind a portable one. Our 18Watt/Hour Lithium-polymer can deliver 18 Watt for one hour, or 1.8 Watt for 10 Hours. That is a lot of power. But standard USB ports are limited to 500mA! This issue not something unique to us, to deliver 1W per channel and power the DAC, clocks and the XMOS USB interface, 500mA are wholly insufficient. "Intelligent Power-Path" (IPP): A standard USB port offering 500mA is only sufficient to operate the iDSD micro in “xxx” mode (you have to wait for upcoming OTW#2), without leaving any current to charge the battery. Hence for the micro iDSD, when on USB power, we have developed the special "Intelligent Power-Path" (IPP) battery charger will use battery power to "backup" USB power if more current is needed. So, the micro iDSD will dip into the battery backup to sustain power peaks. This is somewhat like a hybrid car that uses the petrol engine if and when required. B. “With such a humongous battery, it will take ages to recharge!” This is why we integrated a special circuit to detect the attachment of dedicated charges and the special high power USB ports found on many modern computers. The micro iDSD can detect these ports and then can take advantage of the so-called BCP-1.2 standard, able to play audio AND draw 1,500mA from the computer, not just a measly 500mA. This way in normal operation the battery can recharge in only around 5 hours while simultaneously playing music. C. High Power output needs High-Voltage In order to deliver a powerful headphone output, a powerful and high-voltage power supply is needed. With Lithium-ion batteries limited to around 4.2V maximum, it would mean to either use 8 batteries in series (which requires a lot of space and very complex charging systems) or use some form of power conversion to step-up a single battery voltage to the voltages needed. D. Can I have both Positive and Negative voltages too please? For uncompromised audio performance, a dual supply with positive and negative voltage is a must. Hence we use power converters to create a symmetrical PSU adjustable from ±4.5V@1,000mA transient to a maximum ±13.5V@500mA. Our first take producing this analogue dual-rail power, using a theoretically very neat design just did not work right, never reaching design efficiency and had to be abandoned. This was the problem we highlighted a month ago. Our next take was to cascade two converters, first one to make an adjustable positive voltage at twice the current required and then a second to invert this power line to provide the negative voltage. This circuit alone is quite challenging (in fact, very challenging), while many power IC's are on offer, very few are fast enough for our needs and even fewer allow the output voltage to be adjusted in real-time! We had to find a chip (we went through more than 100 different ICs) that is sufficiently flexible to allow us to use a rather neat design trick – so we can adjust the output voltage of this converter from our 32Bit ARM Cortex CPU, which has a 12-Bit DAC built-in. This way we can adjust the output voltage between 4.5V and 13.5V in over 4,000 precise steps. This chip operates at around 95% efficiency at 0.64MHz and uses a very small PCB area with a solid ground plane and a shielded choke, so very low radiated noise. But this leaves us with only a positive supply, no negative line. The next step was to find a way to invert this positive power line. Again, there is no simple off-the-shelf option; we had to use another "undocumented feature" to create a servo-controlled power converter that precisely inverts the positive rail, so by adjusting the positive rail the negative rail follows precisely to within 1-2mV! Note: Servo-controlled power converter normally only used in $$$$ equipment like the AMR PH-77 (Euro12k/US$12k). cont'd iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Software Design Notes (4). No ordinary DSD - page 56 - Page 52

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iDSD Nano: Top-class says John Fernandes via wintech.pt! ” Whether it’s high resolution PCM signals (32bit/384kHz), DSD (6.2MHz) or DXD (384kHz) reproduced from computer or iPhone / iPad / Android devices, the result is always the same: awesome. It’s like a new world of audio quality high end suddenly stay within reach of a whole new generation of users….IDSD is so extraordinary “on the street” to feed headphones or earphones with high quality sound, as connected to a computer or even a Hi-Fi system of high quality domestic, as it offers not only a stereo output through two standard RCA plugs as well as a coaxial digital output for connection to receivers A / V or any other system of high fidelity…IDSD is at the forefront of this technological trend….A DAC with these capabilities is extremely difficult to find in the market, in any form and at any price, and more difficult even when we know the IDSD represents the state of the art at an affordable price.” Thank you John Fernandes of wintech.pt for this post! http://wintech.pt/54-noticias/hardware/16851-audio-topo-de-gama-em-dispositivos-moveis-com-a-ajuda-do-ifi-nano-idsd

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Crowd Design Outta This World #3: Turbo Over at Head-Fi, we have just announced the 3rd most exciting, "OTW" feature. It is the Turbo headamp option which gives a whopping "8.0V max/4,000 mW @ 16 Ohm." Put it this way, the micro iDSD will drive the HiFi Man HE-6 to 108dB. That is moving some serious air! And Super Duper feature 1.7 "SmartPower" to recharge your iDevice from the micro iDSD! Hope you had as much fun reading this as we did developing these features after your Crowd-Design suggestions. cont'd Crowd Design Outta This World #3: Turbo

Crowd-Design Super Duper Feature 1.6: Kylie and 3D Holographic There are TWO 3D Holographic features in the upcoming micro iDSD: i. 3D for Headphones (as from iCAN) - via 6.3mm ii. 3D for Speakers (as from iTUBE) - via RCAs It is actually quite interesting the history behind these two separate technologies. Super Duper Feature 1.6 3D Holographic for Headphones(i)/Speakers(ii) Section i: Background to 3D Holographic for Headphones Recordings are by and large, made for speakers. By definition, when listening on headphones, you get the "Kylie sensation." [YOUTUBE]IFx3WX4DES0[/YOUTUBE] Put politely, this really irks the human brain as it is not "normal." Explanation Human hearing needs a "mix" of left and right. Not purely left in left and right in right. There are numerous solutions available such as JRMC that use Digital Signal Processing (DSP). There are two drawbacks: 1. The signal is no longer Bit-Perfect. 2. Simple crossfeed does not fully address what the human hearing is missing. How 3D for Headphones benefits the listener Solution: The iFi solution for some time has been 3D Holographic for Headphones. This is an Analogue Signal Processing circuit (ASP) that retains the integrity of the audio signal getting the sound back out of the head + gives the sense forward spaciousness. More akin to this. More reading here: http://ifi-audio.com/wp-content/uploads/data/3DHolographic.pdf Further details here. We hope you like it: iDSD micro Crowd-Design. The Meaty Monster is Power Mad! (part i and ii) - page 52 - Page 49

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Thorsten and gang have been a little quiet of late. We gave them a nudge and here is something they asked us to share with you. Measurements Matter (Not!) Part I of III – Hearing a fly fart at 20 feet Noise. Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) Our team has just spent some time running the complete and working prototype (after redesigning the PSU and that little hiccup with the J-Fet switching) of the iDSD micro through the Audio Precision 2. The test bench. The micro iDSD has actually turned in a more than respectable performance. I hasten to add that up to now there is little proven link between audio measurement results and subjectively perceived sound quality. Most standardised measurements originated in advertising and were standardised to avoid excessive misuse (but not completely eradicated :tongue_smile:). Many a designer who relies on measurements only, finds himself bothered, bewildered and thoroughly confused when many a listener prefers a better sounding product that measured distinctly poorer than his own. That said, as some have already asked about measurements and it has never hurt to have respectable measured results, as long as the subjective listening results are also great Well, here goes, the iDSD micro measured performance data. Please keep all these caveats in mind. The executive summary of the test results reads: Line Out Level: 2.15V SNR: 117dB A-weighted 111dB unweighted Line THD+N: < 0.003% (@0dBFS) HP THD+N: < 0.008% HP (@0dBFS and 0.5W/16Ohm simulated headphone load) Jitter: below AP System 2 measurement limit The signal-noise ratio may seem "only very good" but what must be remembered is that we are running the line out at 2V (nominal, industry-standard) level and as usual, the analogue stage is the noise limit, not the DAC. We could have boosted the SNR figure to make it look really sexy by choosing to set a higher line out level: - for example setting the line out level to 4.25V would have produced a 6dB increase in SNR 117dB un-weighted and 123dB A-weighted*, which reads great but in the real world, this would have resulted in much less usable volume control range for anything we are driving. Even as it stands we are only 3dB (0.5 Bit) off a 20 Bit equivalent SNR**. * The use of “A-weighting” is a long standing standard for dynamic range and SNR measurements in Digital Converters (ADC/DAC). All Datasheets nowadays quote the “A-weighted” number. Thus for consistency we always include A-weighted and unweighted SNR/DNR. ** This is the true measure of any DAC’s or ADC’s resolution, also called ENOB (Equivalent Number Of Bit’s), for example a certain DAC that is promoted as “32 Bit/384KHz” actually shows a SNR of 100dB which is actually 16.5 Bit ENOB, despite all that 32 Bit stuff, so in analogue terms it has around halve the bits claimed… For anyone who likes pretty graphs, we have oodles, this is the first of several select ones with short comments: Graph 01 - iDSD micro White Noise Line 100k 1X 2X 4X 8X This shows the frequency response of the iDSD micro using noise loading with different sample rates 48K (orange), 96K (red), 192K (purple) and 384k (blue) plus the system noise floor at 384kHz. - As the sample rate goes up we can see that the filtering of high frequencies is relaxed and by the time we are at 192kHz and above the filtering is very gentle, maximising time-domain (impulse) response fidelity. - We could show a square wave, but it would look essentially perfect, so little point. - The slight trade-off price is a little higher leakage of the ultrasonic images of the (noise) signal, however as most of it is 120dB down on full scale this is not very worrisome. I remember a professional recording engineer once describe -120dB as “Fly farts at 20 feet”… cont'd iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Super Duper 1.5: Direct/Pre-Amp and switches and pots (page 49) - Page 45

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Femto Clocks – Picky about Phase Noise Background All Femto clocks are good, very good in fact. They exhibit jitter levels lower than most clock crystals which leads to better sonics. An oft quoted benchmark for accuracy is Femtoseconds (Fs) / parts per million. Back in 2008, before the word “Femto Clock” became all the rage, AMR developed a special type of clock in DP-777 as part of the “Global Master Timing” (GMT) and “Jitter less” technologies (why special? See below, because not all Femto clocks are the same). We called it the GMT Clock platform (which is comprised of specialised hardware+software) as it is not just buying a “clock in a can” and job done. Having worked with all sorts of clocks, including discrete, Rubidium, Superclocks and not the least Femto clocks over the years, we know them quite well. All Femto Clocks exhibit excellent low phase-noise (measured jitter within the clock). However, as their origins lay in being part of SONET (Synchronous optical networking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), the popular SONET targeted “Femto-clock” is less desirable as its best phase-noise performance is concentrated in the > 12KHz region (read: at the very top and way above the audible band, so benefits audio less). As an example, this link highlights the use of Femtoclock technology in the telecommunications sector where they are spec'd for: Clock Frequency Accuracy within Femtocells for timing and location | System | Technology The ubiquitous Femto (SONET) Clock This is an Optical Comm system (aka SONET - which is a Subset). We added the blue line to highlight the -70dBr region so that when referenced to the AP2 chart in the next section of the micro iDSD, it is more of an “apple to apple” comparison. The spike at 50KHz is the "signal" As you can see, for quite a few KHz around this region, phase noise is low, this is what matters in this application. However, the area around the green arrow is the most crucial human audible range of 20Hz > 20kHz where phase noise performance is less impressive in the region of -100dB to -70dB. Explanation Therefore, the key for AMR was to design a new system, the “GMT” clock platform which not only exhibits the lowest phase-noise in the crucial audible band, but offers precision (< 0.004ppm tolerance) adjustability with literally millions of possible frequencies (as per the DP-777 "GMT" Technical Paper). The GMT Clock system designed into the micro iDSD measures <280 Fs, comparable to many Femto-Clocks (because it was designed to give low jitter). From the AP2 graph of the micro iDSD below, you can see that jitter in 9kHz > 15 kHz is very good, the micro iDSD noise floor goes all the way down to -150dB which is virtually across the board.with no spikes. AMR/iFi GMT Clock Platform How this benefits the user Consistent, across the board negligible jitter means timing is supreme, with just the right amount of attack/decay and of course, tonal accuracy. We are really pleased with the very low jitter performance of the micro iDSD in the most crucial audible range – in fact, we would not mind if customers pit it against significantly more expensive DACs. We hope you found this interesting as it sheds some light on the particular attention we have paid to parts performance and custom design in the micro iDSD (actually, we took it from the DP-777!). Addendum: What about Rubidium Clocks? Below is a chart of several types of rubidium clocks. What they all exhibit is many sharp spikes in phase noise. Even though they measure well, some down to -150dB, when they spike, noise levels jump up to -70dB to -90dB. This is far from ideal which is why we have not used such clocks, neither in iFi nor AMR products. It all boils down to paying close attention to the specific clock/s used and its performance in the audible range. cont'd iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Technical Notes 3: Going to the nth degree (page 47) - Page 44

iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Super-Duper feature 1.3. Intelligent SPDIF voted #1 by you! This was by far, the most popular choice on this Crowd-Design thread and while we knew SPDIF output was popular, we did not really place much importance on SPDIF input. So a big thanks to you all for this one. The Intelligent SPDIF port: The coaxial port on the micro iDSD enables: SPDIF transmission via: - Coaxial In/Out - Optical In (via supplied adapter) Background Nowadays, cable set top boxes, Network Streamers, TV Boxes, DVD/Blue-ray players etc, all usually come with (co-ax/optical) SPDIF connectivity. Sometimes the customer would like to have USB > SPDIF conversion (with digital output) or SPDIF input (with analogue output). Explanation Normally, the iDSD Micro expects optical or coaxial SPDIF in, but when USB PCM (up to 192KHz) is sent through the USB port, it automatically switches the coax to put out an SPDIF signal. If no USB Stream is playing, it will automatically switch to SPDIF (it will first look for coaxial signal, if that is not present then an optical signal, if that is not present it will go into power-save mode.) As soon as a USB Stream plays again, the SPDIF port becomes a Coax SPDIF Out (no optical output). It is "bi-directional" and uses Global Master Timing/Zero Jitter for the receiver part and re-clocking / driver. It will not perform at the level of the iLINK but it is pretty flexible and more than capable of high-quality SPDIF duties. How this benefits the listener In practice one might connect the SPDIF connector as input from an external SPDIF source (in this case to power the iDSD, no USB source is needed, a 5V Charger will do). The source may be a streamer, DVD Player or some such component. One may even connect USB and SPDIF together, just remember that playing USB overrides SPDIF. There is no risk of damaging either the iDSD or SPDIF source when the SPDIF input becomes temporarily, an output. Alternatively one may use the SPDIF output to drive another (PCM) DAC. In this case there will be no SPDIF signal when there is no USB stream and the iDSD just goes to sleep after a minute or so. Nice flexibility, multi-options. We hope you like it and of course enjoy it! cont'd: iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Technical Notes 3: Going to the nth degree (page 47) - Page 43

Software Team Notes: Real-Time like Jack Bauer! We use an advanced 32bit ARM (given US$ with TI, nice to £s back in the UK) core microprocessor (similar to an Intel Pentium in computing power) that has multiple high-precision 12bit ADCs. They are there to monitor the voltages in real-time in the micro iDSD, just like the voltage sensors built into a BMW. So we are sure all the voltages are spot on, as designed. Together with the 12bit DAC (yes, even the microprocessor has a DAC built-in, and no, we are not using it for audio decoding), we can adjust the supply voltages to the most appropriate values (very precisely to 0.0008V if we wish). We will refer to this later as OTW feature #2 and #3 would not have been possible without this infrastructure. Hence this is why we published this software note today ahead of announcing OTW #3 this week. Further, this advanced ARM core microprocessor has Ultra-Low power consumption, less than 5mA when running and ~2uA when sleep. So what is the benefit? The micro iDSD gets a longer playing time which no-one will be unhappy to discover. cont'd: iDSD micro Crowd-Design. Measurements Matter (Not!) Hearing a fly fart at 20 feet (page 45) - Page 43

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