I’m proud to present the new official Kit V2+. It’s a modest update to the V2 kit, but a big step forward because Audio Input is now included on official Zynthian Kits:
I know it’s not the cheapest option, but we prefer quality vs price, and Hifiberry’s team has customized the soundcard for Zynthian by soldering the extra 40-row-pin connector as we need.
Can the balanced options be exploited.? Funnily enough I was talking to a DJ in a pub yesterday who was very enthusiastic about a balance implementation.
This is a formidable news !
Congratulation to you and the team that made this possible.
What would be required to upgrade from the V2 kit ?
Is it just about the case and HiFiBerry or is there more to it ?
Exactly. It’s just the case and the Hifiberry, but you can make a simple hole to your current aluminum case and it should be enough for the HB’s audio-in mini-jack. I could give you a technical plot
Of course, if you prefer a new case, with holes for the stereo audio-in mini-jack and a balanced audio-in jack (mono), you are very welcome to buy it in the zynthian shop
The HB DAC+ADC is also available in the zynthian shop, with the extra 40-pin connector soldered on it.
A female connector for plugin on top of the RBPi and a male connector for connecting the zynthian’s ribbon-bus-cable. You don’t need to solder anything
Does it support balanced dynamic microphone? Could add an XLR to front / top of Zynthian and use a gooseneck microphone as input. (Great to see audio input promoted - has many use cases.)
Yes, it support it, but the pre-amp gain is only 12db, fixed for balanced input.
When using not-balanced inputs you can choose between 0, 12 & 32 db.
Take a look to specs:
That is what I thought. Not ideal but a good off-the-shelf solution even with that limitation. (It seems strange that they don’t support balanced mic input! Maybe feedback to them might improve this.)
I did indeed read the spec which is why I feel they missed a trick. They recommend using the unbalanced input and high gain setting in the preamp. This will work for many use cases (and may be sufficient for a zynthian with short interconnect, e.g. physically attached, vocoder-style microphone) but it would be great if one could plug a balanced microphone directly into a zyncoder to process vocals. Of course there are lots of solutions and maybe most users would prefer to run their microphones to a mixer and put the zynthian in an insert point or effects send loop. I am just wishing for perfection. The JACK Audio Connection website has a lovely statement, “Of course, a lot of people don’t live in an ideal world, and believe that software should make up for this.” I am going to be quoting that a lot in the future…
so yes, it will work with a high output microphone but not with most dynamic mics which require ~40dB gain nor with condenser mics that require phantom. I am still really glad that the new kit supports audio input and look forward to hearing of peoples experience with it. Well done @jofemodo for enhancing the product. It’s getting better all the time…
Yes, this is pretty clear in the specs … so for using a low output mic with the balanced input, an external pre-amp is needed. Same for phantom devices.
You are very welcome, my friend! I hope to improve it yet more in the future …
