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Cirrus Logic CS4236B


vendor Cirrus Logic
product Crystal CS4236B
interface chip on Intel SE440BX motherboard
duplex full
channels 2
resolution 16 bits
max rate 48 Ksample/sec
chipset CS4611
codec CS4236B
operating system Mandrake 10.1 Linux x86 2.6.8.1
driver cs4236 ALSA 1.0.6
buffer size input 64 KB, output 64 KB
test date Sep 12 2005
notes CS4236B at 0x534, irq 5, dma 1&3
include /etc/isapnp.conf

Set the Tone Generator's digital gain to -1 dB for 2.3 bits more of ENOB.


This card is part of the Full Duplex DAQ comparison survey.

 
Sample Rate
The sample rate on DAQ cards is not a fixed absolute constant.  Like time, it fluctuates, and it is difficult to measure accurately.  Sometimes there are relationships between the input and output sample rates that can reveal interesting details about the inner working machinery.

The following table of measurements use a technique described in the sample rate stability application note. The rate column is the sample rate value that the collection hardware is programmed to.  The in/out rate and in/out error columns are absolute measurements of the ADC / DAC clock.  The loop error column uses a tone generator loopback method for a high accuracy measurement of the relative difference between the ADC and the DAC clocks.  The three error PPM columns are theoretically related by the formula: "in_error - out_error = loop_error"

rate in rate out rate in error out error loop error
4000 4009.123 4009.132 +2280.75 PPM +2283.00 PPM +31.6196 PPM *
5510 5512.549 5512.561 +462.613 PPM +464.791 PPM +0.0000 PPM
8000 7999.320 7999.331 -85.0000 PPM -83.6250 PPM +0.0000 PPM
11025 11025.106 11025.114 +9.6145 PPM +10.3401 PPM +0.0000 PPM
12000 12027.392 12027.398 +2282.67 PPM +2283.17 PPM +0.0000 PPM
16000 16006.212 16006.222 +388.250 PPM +388.875 PPM +0.0000 PPM
22050 22050.236 22050.249 +10.7029 PPM +11.2925 PPM +0.0000 PPM
24000 24054.812 24054.824 +2283.83 PPM +2284.33 PPM +0.0000 PPM
32000 32012.448 32012.475 +389.000 PPM +389.844 PPM +0.0000 PPM
44100 44100.510 44100.527 +11.5646 PPM +11.9501 PPM +0.0000 PPM
48000  47972.865  47973.211  -565.313 PPM  -558.104 PPM  +0.0000 PPM 


The "*" signifies a very noisy spectrum which probably makes the loop error measurement invalid.  Only the 4000 sample rate has this problem.

The CS4236B is amazing in that the loop error measurement is +0.0000 PPM for all of the sample rates except 4000.  This means that the ADC and DAC clocks are locked and all of the DSP sample rate conversions retain this ratio.  This is backed up by the observation that for every sample rate the in error is approximately equal to the out error.

It appears that 44100 is the native rate for the clock and all of the other rates are derived from that.  There are some interesting in/out error groupings by sample rate.  The 4000, 12000, and 24000 sample rates have absolute errors of +2283 PPM.  The 16000 and 32000 sample rates have absolute errors of +389 PPM.  The 11025, 22050, 44100 sample rates have absolute errors of +11 PPM.  The following rates are odd balls in that they match no groupings { 5510 8000 48000 }.  Not sure what the significance of the non matching rates is other than a different clock division strategy/formula/constants being at work.

It is interesting that the measured rate for 5510 is 5512.5 which exactly half of 11025. 

 
Frequency Domain
The sound card's input and output jacks are connected with a short external cable and run in full duplex mode.  This is a loopback test and baudline's tone generator is the signal source.  Distortion, noise floor, filter response, and inter channel crosstalk are the frequency domain measurements of interest in this section. 

The signal test sources are a pure sine wave, a linear sine sweep, and WGN.  The sine wave is used for the distortions and crosstalk measurements.  The linear sine sweep and WGN are used for the filter characterization measurement.  Both are an application of the swept sine vs. WGN technique and are equivalent measures of the frequency response. 

Since spectral performance is a function of sample rate, each of the sound card's native rates will be tested.  The highest sample rate is usually the cleanest and this is advantageous because it allows the isolated testing of the ADC and the DAC.  The matched, source, and sink sample rate combinations are described below.

matched
The input and output sample rates are the same.  This combination tests the performance of both the ADC and the DAC in a matched mode of operation.  The linear sine sweep signal in the left spectrogram display and the WGN (orange) in the Average window characterize the in-band filter response.  The sine wave (green) in the Average window is used for distortion and crosstalk measurements.  The sine leakage (purple) is used for crosstalk measurement

source
The sample rate of the input (sink) is the card's highest clean rate.  This combination tests the performance of the DAC.  The linear sine sweep signal in the middle spectrogram display characterizes the DAC filter response.  The position of the pass-band and the stop-band filter transition is defined by the Nyquist frequency of the DAC.  The noise floor (purple) is the Average collection of a silent channel.

sink
The sample rate of the output (source) is the card's highest clean rate.  This combination tests the performance of the ADC.  The linear sine sweep signal in the rightmost spectrogram display and the orange curve in the Average window below it characterize the ADC filter response.  The position of both the pass-band and the stop-band filter transition is defined by time in the spectrogram and by folded frequency in the Average window.  The orange Average curve represents the pass-band while the cyan curve is a folded representation of the stop-band ADC filter response.  The noise floor (purple) is the Average collection of a silent channel.

The naming convention for the columns below is (DAC -> ADC) where DAC represents the source sample rate and ADC represents the sink sample rate. 


matched
source (DAC)
sink (ADC)
4000 -> 4000 4000 -> 44100 44100 -> 4000

The wideband pulses in the 4000 and source spectrogram sweep has a 0.108 second period (432 samples).

5510 -> 5510 5510 -> 44100 44100 -> 5510


8000 -> 8000 8000 -> 44100 44100 -> 8000


11025 -> 11025 11025 -> 44100 44100 -> 11025


12000 -> 12000 12000 -> 44100 44100 -> 12000


16000 -> 16000 16000 -> 44100 44100 -> 16000


22050 -> 22050 22050 -> 44100 44100 -> 22050


24000 -> 24000 24000 -> 44100 44100 -> 24000


32000 -> 32000 32000 -> 44100 44100 -> 32000


44100 -> 44100  
 

The 44100 rate has a very clean spectrogram sweep and less than 1 dB peak-to-peak filter ripple.

48000 -> 48000 48000 -> 44100 44100 -> 48000

The 48000 filter has a problem.  The valley of the attenuation is at 22050 Hz.  It looks like a 44100 filter with some strange mirror folding.



distortion
The following table of measurements were made using the technique described in the sine distortion application note.  It is a full duplex test that uses a loopback of the tone generator to measure the various distortion parameters.  The stereo crosstalk column is a measure of channel leakage that uses a sine wave channel and a silent channel as the signal sources.

rate SNR THD SINAD ENOB SFDR crosstalk
4000 +24.73 dB -23.40 dB +21.00 dB +3.196 bits +26.14 dB -76.34 dB
5510 +80.48 dB -75.23 dB +74.09 dB +12.014 bits +78.96 dB -76.16 dB
8000 +78.22 dB -76.03 dB +73.97 dB +11.994 bits +80.85 dB -75.55 dB
11025 +78.74 dB -75.77 dB +74.00 dB +11.998 bits +80.58 dB -74.81 dB
12000 +77.17 dB -75.79 dB +73.41 dB +11.901 bits +80.67 dB -74.46 dB
16000 +76.93 dB -75.40 dB +73.09 dB +11.847 bits +80.75 dB -73.51 dB
22050 +76.48 dB -74.52 dB +72.38 dB +11.729 bits +80.10 dB -71.86 dB
24000 +74.25 dB -75.06 dB +71.63 dB +11.605 bits +80.21 dB -71.71 dB
32000 +73.94 dB -83.72 dB +70.82 dB +11.471 bits +79.57 dB -70.04 dB
44100 +73.66 dB -73.92 dB +70.78 dB +11.464 bits +80.07 dB -68.32 dB
48000  +72.47 dB  -73.19 dB  +69.80 dB  +11.302 bits  +79.84 dB  -67.35 dB 



The 44100 rate is the maximum sample rate that has the cleanest spectrogram sweep.  So the source and sink columns use 44100 instead of the standard 48000.  The 48000 sample rate has a minor flaw with it's filter but this doesn't have much effect on the distortion measurements.

The 4000 sample rate has some serious spectral problems.  The CS4236B does not natively support the 4000 rate so this spectral damage is likely caused by the ALSA sample rate converters gone wrong. 

The distortion measurements gradually improve as the sample rate decreases.  This is decimation gain, it is expected, and it is a sign of a well designed ADC / DAC codec.  The CS4236B has very sharp and very clean filters.  The average spectrum plots of the sink column have filter curves that look almost identical.  This consistency is another sign of a well designed codec.

 
Quantization
A white Gaussian noise signal source was generated and captured in full duplex loopback fashion at each of the standard sample rates.  The Histogram plots below show a unique sample distribution that is dependent on sample rate.

4000, 5510, 11025, 22050, 44100

spur cadence = { none }

8000

spur cadence = { 2+, 1-, 1+, 1-, 1+, 1-, ... }

12000

spur cadence = { 1-, 2+, 1-, 3+, ... }

16000

spur cadence = { 1-, 3+, 1-, 4+, ... }

24000

spur cadence = { 1-, 5+, 1-, 5+, 1-, 6+, ... }

32000

spur cadence = { 1+, 2-, 1+, 1-, 1+, 2-, 1+, 1-, 1+, 2- ... }

48000

spur cadence = { 1-, 11+, 1-, 12+, ... }


The cadence grammar occasionally skips a spur sub-phrase so it is difficult to accurately define the exact grammar.  Some very odd sample quantization rounding and truncating must be at work.  Quantization errors typically cause spectral noise and harmonics but in this cause it has no effect on ENOB and the other distortion measurements. 

The 4000, 5510, 11025, 22050, 44100 sample rates have clean Gaussian shaped bell curves.  All of the other rates have a spur cadence grammar.  An interesting observation is that the granularity of the spur cadence gets finer and the solidness of the Gaussian shape gets fuller as the sample rate decreases.  So the requantization with the 48000 sample rate looks like it is the source that is causing the histogram bin holes and this damage is propagated down to all of the divisible rates. 

 
Channel Delay
A sine wave signal was generated and captured in full duplex loopback mode.  The time domain response was observed with the Waveform window where the green curve represents the left channel and the purple curve represents the right channel. 



The CS4236B chipset has a zero sample inter channel delay.

 
Analysis
The 48000 sample rate has a number of flaws such as absolute sample rate, folded frequency domain filter shape, and quantization holes that suggest it is derived from the 44100 rate.  The 44100 rate is very clean in all respects and it is the CS4236B's native sample rate.

The CS4236B has very clean filters all sample rates expect 4000 and 48000.  The sample rate, spectrogram sweeps, and histogram quantization shapes are best at 11025, 22050, and 44100 but all of the other rates have good performance.

The initial sample rate conversion from the 44100 base to 48000 and 32000 create some very interesting artifacts in the sample rate, frequency, and quantization domains.  The propagation of these flaws can then be traced down through the following decimation by 2 series { 48000 24000 12000 } and { 32000 16000 8000 4000 }.

 
Conclusion
For the highest performance with the CS4236B chipset use the 11025, 22050, or 44100 sample rates. 

The 5510, 8000, 12000, 16000, 24000, 32000 sample rates have slight spectrogram sweep noise and mild histogram quantization irregularity.  Strangely these minor flaws have have no ill effect on the distortion measurements.  The CS4236B has very high quality filters so the performance is quite good.  These rates do have large absolute sample rate errors so if exact frequency accuracy is an issue then avoid these rates.

Do not use the 4000 rate since it is broken.  Avoid using the 48000 sample rate because it has poor filtering.

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