Chris Gammell and Dave Jones' voices span the chasm of thousands of miles each and every week to speak to each other and industry experts about where the field of electronics is moving. Whether it be a late breaking story about a large semiconductor manufacturer, a new piece of must-have test equipment or just talking through recent issues with their circuit designs, Chris and Dave try to make electronics more accessible for the listeners. Most importantly, they try and make the field of electronics more fun. Guests range from advanced hobbyists working on exciting new projects up through C-level executives at a variety of relevant and innovative companies. Tune in to learn more about electronics and then join the conversation! Visit The Amp Hour website for our back catalog of 150+ episodes.
Why didn’t we stop trying to improve audio setups in the 70s?
Remco started with vacuum tubes but moved into silicon at Wolfson Micro. He got his first job by writing a letter asking if they needed anyone and his hobby projects helped to place him into special projects group.
“If you work in hardware you play with simulators. If you work in software, you play with hardware”. This is why he moved into applications.
For a little while, he worked at Rohm Semi on LEDs
Back into audio with ASK industries, who make hardware that is used in stereo setups for cars that are branded with Bang & Olafsson and Burmester.
Differences between car and home
Extreme conditions, like Audi running a 36 hour “sun test”
Fixed acoustic environment
One thing they did was to develop a tuning tool for the end brand (ie. B&O) to tweak with their experts
Big things they were working on was outside noise cancellation and engine noise cancellation
However, not all sound is bad. “Putting the car in ‘sport mode’ pumps more sound into the cabin”
They’re really trying to find the acoustic transfer function (of say, the engine) to reverse any impact it has on the listener’s ears.
Unwanted noise is first put through a filter. Then they have to apply filter before sound arrives.
An example transform is a Levinson-Durbin recursion
Active Noise Control (ANC) isn’t really “cancellation”
It’s important to think about the stability, since it’s a control system
Often they’re looking for the lambda coefficient
After going out on his own, Remco and his family moved to Poland. Polish is a difficult language to learn. It’s on a remote branch of the “tree of languages” (which show the inheritance of different languages and the other languages they’re based upon)
Poland has a growing tech scene
Past guests Jan Rychter and Michael Gielda from Ant Micro (and most of the team) are based in Poland, though in different areas. “7Sensing” is another dev shop out there.
Remco is now consulting via ItsOnlyAudio.com and is a member of the Consulting forum (apply here if interested in joining).
When not working on client projects, he is building up IP library and bringing demos to audio shows
ADI Sharc DSP
Shannon Parks episode
Tools of the trade for doing audio on chips
CMSIS DSP library
Components of that library
Biquad filter
DMA buffers
Ring buffers
Loudness war website
Push to custom silicon are necessary for super phase sensitive items
PTP – Precision Time Protocol based on UDP
Chris wondered if Disney World does something like this to synchronize speakers throughout the park? BoingBoing article
Dunte protocol
AVB
Audio ecosystem is fairly small, though there are some startups now
Modern audio need to tie into Alexa / Google / Apple for streaming
OCA – open control alliance (warning: autoplay audio??)
Signal processing / fidelity is as good as it can get, wow we need to improve playback environment
Improving noise comfort for loud urban environment
Chris and Remco have both used binaural beats to try and drown out sound in the past