ADAU1452 and AES3

Hello AST,

As you know, if you deal with the electrical level and impedance issues to interface to an AES3 signal you will be able to decode or encode the audio. The two formats have a lot of similarities. The major difference is in the status bits. They are very different. If we were to support it then there would need to be a different set of registers etc. to deal with the different channel status bits. So that is why we say it is not supported. For us to support something it has to be 100% up to standards. You can certainly try to do this but if you are sending a signal to a different piece of equipment that is expecting certain status bits then it will be an issue. The first bit will say it is an SPDIF signal.

So you can experiment on your own but we obviously cannot guarantee it will work for all equipment you interface to. You can read up on this in Wiki AES3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I do remember many years ago, shortly after the AES standard came out, I experimented with interchanging SPDIF and AES/EBU signals and it would work once the levels were accounted for. However, the standard has evolved since then so I am not sure how well it will work across different implementations. If you have time to experiment let me know how it goes. I am sure others will want to know. But, as I said, it will not be conforming to the AES3 standards.

Dave T

Hello Dave,

thank you for your answer. This is more or less the answer I expected.

I think receiving AES3 signals with the internal receiver might work quite well, but transmitting is uncertain and depends on the receiving Hardware.

If we really try this, I will inform the community about the results.

Best regards

AST