[comp.sys.mac.hardware] CAPABILITY OF AUDIOMEDIA FROM DIGIDESIGN

mece1ui@jetson.uh.edu (09/25/90)

CAPABILITY OF AUDIOMEDIA

DOES AUDIOMEDIA CAN ACCEPT ONLY SOUND INPUT?
CAN THE USER PROGRAM THE MOTOROLA 56001 CHIP DIRECTLY?
DOES IT HAVE THE SAME CAPACITY AS THE DSP CHIP IN NeXT?

paulr@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Paul T Russell) (09/28/90)

From article <7019.26fe179d@jetson.uh.edu>, by mece1ui@jetson.uh.edu:
> CAPABILITY OF AUDIOMEDIA
> 
> DOES AUDIOMEDIA CAN ACCEPT ONLY SOUND INPUT?

It can accept stereo sound input via dual line inputs (phono)
or a stereo mike input. It also provides stereo line outputs
(phono). Unlike the Sound Accelerator there is no easy way
of adding other interfaces (eg: DAT).

> CAN THE USER PROGRAM THE MOTOROLA 56001 CHIP DIRECTLY?

Yes, it's fairly easy to write 56000 code which can be downloaded
to the 56k for execution. This need not be sound related, ie.
you can use the 56k as a general purpose coprocessor. I believe
there is an image processing application (Ultimage ?) which
uses the 56k if available. One nice feature of AudioMedia
compared to the Sound Accelerator is that you have 'DMA'
access to all the 56000 external memory over the NuBus
so you can get data to and from teh board a lot faster.
(Makes debugging a lot easier too!)

> DOES IT HAVE THE SAME CAPACITY AS THE DSP CHIP IN NeXT?

The 56k on the NeXT is clocked at 25 MHz I think, whereas the 
AudioMedia clocks it at just over 20 MHz - not much difference,
in other words. You can expend the memory on the NeXT more than
on the AudioMedia (can't remember the limits off hand). Generally
speaking this is not a problem (we haven't needed to expand
our Sound Accelerator or AudioMedia boards from the supplied
amount of memory yet).

//Paul

Usual disclaimer: I'm just a satisfied customer of DigiDesign.

-- 
           Paul Russell, Department of Experimental Psychology
         University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QG, England
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