I’m set up for multi channel music - I have JMLab Nova Utopia Be speakers in the front, JMLab Alto Utopia Be’s in the rear and a JMLab Sub Utopia Be for the “.1” (tho there’s no Be dome in the sub 
) They are arranged in a 22’ ITU circle (i.e. equal distant to the center, 30 degrees to the left, 30 to the right, 110 to the left and 110 to the right) Tho the bass drivers are different between the Nova and the Alto’s they have the same high and mid drivers so the tonal character is the same from all speakers.
dvg_au said Be pretty awesome if "someone" put an upgradeable FPGA into a Sprout, replacing the shelf Sabre...Currently, if the Sprout has a lot of success (as evidenced by being on the cover of, oh i don’t know - say, … Stereophile) there will be loads of copying in no time.
So many product opportunities for PS Audio - it must be difficult to work out what to say “no” to.
Indeed, we’re never short of product ideas or cool directions as you have suggested. Just the time and resources to make them happen. FPGAs aren’t inexpensive and Sprout’s on a tight budget as it is. There’s a lot of high end crammed in that little box already…
“There’s a lot of high end crammed in that little box already…”
As I’ve told my spouse!
Paul McGowan saidHmmmn, well, what if:dvg_au said Be pretty awesome if "someone" put an upgradeable FPGA into a Sprout, replacing the shelf Sabre...Indeed, we're never short of product ideas or cool directions as you have suggested. Just the time and resources to make them happen. FPGAs aren't inexpensive and Sprout's on a tight budget as it is. There's a lot of high end crammed in that little box already...Currently, if the Sprout has a lot of success (as evidenced by being on the cover of, oh i don’t know - say, … Stereophile) there will be loads of copying in no time.
So many product opportunities for PS Audio - it must be difficult to work out what to say “no” to.
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Sprout Box was enlarged to required size - no longer a constraint
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FPGA pricing was indicated by :
(haven’t done the work to check whether the DS DAC pictured in the same FPGA family (XC6SLX16) is represented by the link above, but at $26.25 / single unit, my experience in buying electronic components in bulk is that favourable discount come with a decent quantity / order size; have also paid $800 for a single, surely far less capable FPGA circa 2002)
- very interesting that according to the specification table, that for nearly exactly six times the base price of a single unit, that circa 10x the resources are available ( across the board: RAM, LUTs, Flip-flops)
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/user_guides/ug385.pdf
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with plenty of room in the chassis for supporting circuitry
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some rule of thumb of 1 : 5 cost of manufacture to retail pricing was applied
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would a many / multi-channel DS be beyond the realm of possibility ?
Certainly would be “future” proof.
Pricing for value, would raise the price, and create space for the FPGA enhanced Sprout plus multi-optical ports mini-bridge in between.
The Sprout is a very thin margin already, it’s not clear that you could get enough more bang for the buck with an FPGA to be worth it.
As to the DS:
The bigger problem with a multi channel DS is the shear size of the physical components. The digital side would be about twice as big - not a problem, but the analog would need to be approx. 3 times the size, sort of a problem and the power supply would need to be about twice the size.
Indeed time marches on, the prototypes for the DS used Spartan 3E’s, the DS uses a Spartan 6 and now the Artix 7 is a better bang for the buck at these sizes - about $50 a piece in quantity 100 for enough horse power for 6 channels, fairly expensive for one component, but still doable.
My pet peeve it that I’d probably need to add an HDMI input and hence be in licensing hell. I don’t begrudge them their monetary due, but often dealing with the logistics and selling enough units to make it worth while is hard for smaller companies.
Also tho I’d be completely happy with a music oriented multi channel DAC, the market is much bigger for a home theater multichannel style DAC and for home theater you almost certainly need to support things like variable speaker sizes (and hence crossovers to the sub, etc.), speaker distance (non-trivial sized buffers for hi-res sample rates), bass management (interesting crossover options - i.e. more DSP function), etc. Also many would want 6.1, … 9.1 instead of just 5.1 or 6.0. I already get enough “crap” for the amount of DSP I do 
Still I don’t know of anyone else doing home theater processing to DSD without converting to lower rate PCM, that could be a nice selling feature.
Another approach is to better support ganging of multiple stereo DACs, but tho they should/could share one digital card things like three cases drive the price up quite a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thinking about a MC DAC and want to build one, I just don’t know when…
You don’t want to get into the surround sound processor business. THe rationale for building a MCH DAC is to offer an alternative architecture that decouples standard SSP features like bass management, delay, DRC and post processing from D/A conversion. Only thing you would probably want is channel trim (although this could also be done upstream in the digital chain), so the device would become a digital MCH D/A converter preamp, offering D/A conversion, input switching, and volume control. You would have 3x AES/EBU, 3x S/PDIF, 3x I2S, USB and possibly HDMI inputs. You could make HDMI optional, so avoid adding cost to units that don’t need it. In fact, ideally you would have a swapable input board… Nice project to sink your teeth in!