I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the Creative Play! 4.
Dirt cheap, drives my IEMs and Audio Technica M50x just fine and has some really handy extra noise cancelling features for voice and video calls. Cost around £20!
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By the way, what is the audio spec built into the Framework? I noticed the driver didn’t install from the driver pack and it just sits as a standard audio device in Windows.
Realtec or not? It’s okay did some digging it’s an inherited IDT/Tempo chip.
I realize that USB DACs are the “new hotness” (presumably due to compatibility with smartphones and tablets as well as lacking a need for external power), but I never could help but think they’re technologically a step backwards from optical S/PDIF since one of the main benefits of optical was isolation from RMI and EMI which I would imagine to be more problematic on something like a small laptop than a large full ATX desktop.
So, yeah, that’s always something - an optical S/PDIF output expansion card.
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Folks that are into Hi-Fi forget that the computer gear they mostly use now is designed to far higher standards and by people all much smarter than anyone in the Hi-Fi industry. I moved away from a lot of the Hi-Fi world when I saw the same kind of voodoo BS being applied to computer gear as was being applied to the ‘garden shed designed’ audio stuff we’d been buying 30 years previous.
And this is coming from someone that had a all Meridian Hi-Fi system by the time they were 23 back in the early 90’s.
But you know, burn your audio CDs at x1 speed if you got the time to waste. 
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Well, I am doing some homework on the chips I want to cram in there, and the physical dimensions aren’t looking too good in terms of PCB real estate. Definitely speaks to my lack of experience in designing boards, but I do wonder what the real engineers say.
AK4458: AK4458VN | Audio D/A Converters | Audio Components | Products | Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM)
PCM5122: PCM5122 data sheet, product information and support | TI.com
That can be achieved if I use a codec chip that supports both inputs and outputs, thankfully TI and AKM or (insert vendor here) have those options as well. The amp stages are what I’m worried about, unless they’re already built into the chip.
If you showcase some teardown photos, I’d delightfully try and use them as reference. Then again, if it exhibits high levels of chinesium build quality, maybe not.
And yes, this is definitely terrible value for time and money. Just wanted to see if the physics even allow it to happen.
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https://community.frame.work/t/high-end-audio-dac-multiple-ports/15723/16?u=the_gambler
Oh, this chip looks promising. The chip’s form factor will be a PITA to hand-solder, but it looks doable (I can hand-solder SOIC/SSOP/QFP at smallest).
The 6.35 mm jack will impose an overhang, but that’s what asked 
Would mini-XLR work better for this scenario instead? There’s a lot less connector needed inside the expansion card iirc. (Though because you asked for 6.35 mm jack you probably want standard inputs on the expansion card imho)
And should that exp. card come into existence, you’d probably end up with the rear end of a Learjet on your FW.
/s
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You take the Play! 4 and simply plug it onto your headphones. This it’s just ready to plug into your laptop, like you would headphones into the laptop.
No need to turn it into a card. You’d be carrying headphones anyway…
This is a change they made due to supply constraints, so yours must be one of the newer laptops. My batch 5 Framework has the Realtek codec, and the firmware is noticeable, as well as a few software doodads that were included. The Tempo chip is a “dumb” DAC, where the Realtek was a “smart” one. I remember seeing somewhere that it was a supply issue, they simply couldn’t get the Realtek ones anymore, and so they switched to something that was available.
And in regards to high end DACs, my Fiio BTR5 is working wonders, and while it is certainly a high-end piece of equipment, I can say that the onboard codec of the Framework isn’t noticeably different. I may not be an expert in the field, but I can’t tell a difference, and I’ve gone to not even using the BTR5 with my laptop. It was mostly so I could use audiophile-grade headphones (Grado SR80x’s) with my phone, which has regrettably been stripped of its audio jack.
TL:DR, the Framework DAC is actually rather good, without a noticeable difference in quality from my dedicated one.
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I must say I’ve been playing my IDT/Tempo Framework at home for music to break in the speakers (if that’s a thing really) and on it’s own its not too bad. Miles Davis and Ladyhawke etc. did not sound offended. I added some tape to dampen the tops of the speaker units. No vibration or such when pushed to the max. I might get some 1mm thick sorbothane pads to further dampen/isolate stuff.
https://community.frame.work/t/high-end-audio-dac-multiple-ports/15723/21?u=luke_oliver
That pair exactly
I suppose I should specify here that I wasn’t speaking of the output capacity of the laptop, the Grados are only 32 ohm, you could run them out of an original iPod, so that’s not what I was commenting on. That being said, plugged into my laptop, comfortable volume for me is 4 or 6 (out of the 100, on windows), so there is certainly some power hiding in there. I don’t actually have high-impedance headphones, but I would love to see a test with 200-300 ohm ones.
There are some small USB-C dongles that have high end DACs inside, such as the Hidizs S3 Pro that I have. It manages to squeeze in an ESS9281C, which supports 384/32 PCM, DSD128, and full MQA unfolding. I’ve tried on my Framework; it’s a very small improvement over the built-in Realtek, though it might move ahead a bit more for playing DSD because of its native support for the format.
The circuitry inside the dongle could probably be squeezed into a module. But heat dissipation might be an issue; the S3 Pro gets rather warm if I drive my planar headphones with it, and a module won’t have that exterior metal surface to act as a heat sink.
Of course you can also just use the dongle as it is and not bother to squeeze it into a module. It’s an extra thing to carry, though.
@Nich_Trimble Using the HDMI port is a common enough thing for a lot of us to justify dedicating a port to it. People who use their laptop for presentations are a good example; HDMI is usually what the conference provides, so if your laptop has the port you can just plug in with no muss or fuss.
The same idea applies to the USB-A port. USB storage sticks are ubiquitous, and having the ability to plug one in to move files to or from the Framework is handy. Yes, USB-C sticks exist, but the USB-A ones are far more common and they’re likely to be what somebody hands you at a conference.
My usual travel configuration is 1xUSB-A, 1xHDMI, and 2xUSB-C. For extended battery operation I’ll go to 4xUSB-C for minimum idle power, and if there were blank modules to put in place of a couple of those USB-C I’d probably do it.
@The_Gambler Hello this is a great idea!
I produce electronic music on the PC, so for me low latency is a critical concern.
Typically I can only get low latency (the time from pressing a note on a USB keyboard or VST virtual instrument to hearing the sound) using ASIO drivers and around 2 to 10 mill-seconds. So driver support as well as a high quality DAC and amplifier is important.
I use an outboard Roland Mobile UA audio interface with a USB connection which does the above, but it would be amazing if there were a native solution for the Framework laptop. Incidentally the Roland Mobile UA uses AKM DACS and TDA 6120 headphone amplifier chips.
That would be awesome! As long as it’s not getting internal interference and crosstalk that would be a brilliant idea. That would make it immediately more widely applicable to a far larger user base.
Standard jack would probably be the smarter play as it would mean this laptop could be brilliant for bands travelling around. I know macs generally are the go because of software, but the Framework could be the Windows alternative. Much easier for tech’s to fix on the road as well.
mini-XLR looks pretty interesting though.
Tbh I’m not a muso, just learning guitar and violin right now, but was intensely interested if the Framework could be used by travelling bands and if I could use it to record my playing directly. I enjoy using Guitar Rig for digital amps, and I just want a clean input when I get my Framework. I know I’ll probably need something external, but if there’s a chance I could use an expansion card for violin and guitar input that would be awesome. One less dongle to carry, which is the whole point of the cards!
Do you use any instrument inputs, or just producing music digitally?
Also, is there any reason that 3.5mm couldn’t be used for an instrument input? Would it be possible to just have my electric guitar output through its 6.35mm, down the cable, into 3.5mm on the other end? Google isn’t being very insightful in this regard, and I’m not sure if there’s any functional problems with this, other than 6.35mm to 6.35mm cables being ubiquitous. It would just need a solid amp like we were already talking about.
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Sorry long time since I’ve been back, now Intel Gen 12 cpus are available!
Yes I record with a phantom powered mic, but this requires 50 Vdc provided by an external USB soundcard, I think it is currently impossible to incorporate this into a tiny expansion port.
I also have an electric guitar that I have recorded on a few tracks, but again I think it would be too difficult if not impossible to incorporate.
Maybe a high quality audio expansion module could be made with low latency ASIO support, and a decent quality DAC.
Incidentally I bought a FiiO/Jade Audio KA1 USB-C DAC for my phone, and it’s tiny, I bet the electronics would fit into an expansion card, and it has very good quality sound, a loud headphone output and supports ASIO, DSD etc…
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I’m working on a headphone amp module based on the TI TPA6120, and I gotta tell you, you just can’t miniaturize this stuff too much because of the analog portions. Either you have large capacitors, fancy op-amps, or a big chip. Maybe more than one of these. All of these have trade-offs and all of them take board space (and minimizing board space creates even more trade-offs). Even the headphone jack is a huge amount of the available space in a module.
I’m confident you can get a pretty nice headphone amp into an expansion module, but if you’re doing literally anything else that needs audio quality, just get a USB audio interface.
I’ll look into the ES9281 chip in the FiiO KA1, though… that looks interesting. Oh yikes, it’s like $11 each, minimum quantity 10, plus shipping. No wonder the KA1 is like $50.
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If it’s one thing I have learned being on the Framework forum is that people have real difficulty realising space, volume and dimensions.
The things they have wanted or wondered could be fitted into those tiny modules…
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And often, people do! It’s that the chips (and some technologies) to do actual low-footprint stuff aren’t available on hobbyist scale, because of NDAs or high MOQs or piles of proprietary stuff to wade through. Samsung could make a pretty advanced LTE modem card and have it fit within the expansion card footprint, for instance, but they ain’t gonna!
Oh for sure. Of note, everything HDMI requires an NDA, and the HDMI folks are practically hostile to hobbyists, so rolling your own just doesn’t happen. There are some hacks that exploit the fact that the old DVI standard is based on the same signal transmitter, but that only guarantees the 640x480 resolution “failsafe” mode required by HDMI specs, with no audio.