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.
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…
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.
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.
We have this problem internally at Framework too! You should see the list of modules we have just barely not enough space to realize, but are holding out hope for our future selves to solve.
Looks like internally that’s a PIC32MX micro (a good choice, it has an easy-to-customize USB Audio Device 2.0 example profile and works great as a USB to i2s bridge), a relatively low-end DAC from the same folks who make the chip in the FiiO KA1, and a TI TPA6130. The TPA6130 is more featured but lower spec’d than the TPA6120 I’m about to build.
Nothing wrong with that design, I think. Using the PIC32MX was something I considered as well, but I was stymied because only very physically large versions are reliably in stock. Might be able to do it as an expansion module. But ironically while the expansion module has more board area than these gumstick amps, being able to do a long layout is a lot more useful for how this chips are laid out. The audio path is intended to go more or less in a straight line, and that doesn’t really fit on the module layout when there’s an audio jack, so you have to get weird with things.
Question on the audio board for @nrp and engineers: From the pinout github, it looks like the audio board is just a headphone jack and a hall-effect sensor for the lid? Is that right? Analog audio comes off the mainboard?
Since it’s such a tiny board with not much on it, could we get a schematic and board outline CAD drawing? Now that I’ve looked up the TPA6130, I think one could be squeezed onto the audio board itself. The final result might not be the best, but it’d likely boost the drive capability pretty well. Only downside should be a slight reduction in line-level performance (i.e. external powered speakers), but I’m sure I’d be hard pressed to hear it.
This wouldn’t meet a requirement for multiple ports, and I will leave it to others to argue whether it qualifies as high end. But the price is right and the size looks promising. The Apple USB C 3.5mm headphone adapter might fit in a removable port case just by bending the cable into an “S” shape.
I have one that I think compares favorably against some much costlier DAC / amp dongles. The notable caveat is that it won’t put out enough power to drive high impedance, low sensitivity headphones at high volume.
@Paul_Combe I like the idea of using the internal audio board.
By the way FrameWork themselves would likely produce, in some future, audio boards with a (better) DAC directly on it. When some improved motherboard would support that too, of course.
Why I think that, is that Nrp himself told during an AMA that it was the initial intent when designing the laptop, and that they gave up only on some minor considerations about the increase in internal connectivity that it would require (so, not at all such a big problem).
The reason why high end dacs are outside of PCs rather than internal via an old school pci card is noice.
Being too close to the electrical noise generated by the computer components (especially in a compact laptop in a metal case!) can really limit the improvement a dac makes.
Honestly if you’re that opposed to a “dongle” you might have a serious issue getting proper audio.
At that point just stick to the internal and don’t expect audiophile level sound anyways. If you had a set of headphones that needed a good dac/amp then you probably know this all already.
@Zax But isn’t there a wide range of the possible quality of audio within the constraints of keeping it internal? Don’t you agree there are machines sounding better than others, just out of their default 3.5mm jack?
It would be really nice to max out what is technically possible without a dongle first. Of course a dongle would provide even better results, especially since they already exist and don’t require to create anything new.
But let’s see to how far a non-dongle design can lead us, especially for the FrameWork, and considering the two particularities it has on other laptops which are: the presence of an audio board (not yet exploited to its full potential, as the DAC is not on it for now), and the existence of the extension compartments.
Also, aren’t there some technical solutions to shield internal audio components from the electrical noise?
You just rapidly reach the point of diminishing returns, especially when you’re building a device that’s constrained by size. Price per improvement will likely be very minimal, especially when a usb dac is not terribly expensive and will provide a better experience.
Oh and a lot of USB dacs come with a volume knob. There’s no substitute for a proper knob.
