Meeting Report – Audio Interfaces for Computers
On Mon June 3rd 18 members and guests met at Swinburne Uni to hear Mark Edwards describe the principles and techniques for audio interfaces for computers.
Mark covered topics such as PC hardware architecture, Operating System architecture, Device Drivers, Data Interfaces (USB/Firewire/Thunderbolt/PCIe), and Protocols.
He then went on to cover the latency issue – cases where low latency is very important, its causes and ways to reduce it .. including a software tool available to quantify and troubleshoot latency issues.
The software described, DPC Latency Checker, can be downloaded here.
He also covered the “zero latency” feature available in some interfaces, and how it’s implemented.
Mark finished the presentation with the subject of clocking, highlighting the theoretical and practical issues surrounding the failure to establish a reference clock and to lock all devices to that clock. Examples of a range of typical clocking scheme scenarios were presented to illustrate the point.
A lively Q&A session followed Mark’s presentation – covering a wide range of topics on the subject, with several attendees also providing valuable additional insight from their own knowledge and experiences on this, and related topics.
Here Mark describes the computer’s audio system at the Operating System level…
The presentation’s slides (as a PDF) can be viewed/downloaded here
An audio recording of the presentations and question time is
available for listening or downloading here (duration 1hr24min).