Some great detective work by @Ermos turned up the following patent application by dCS (Butler, Hollinshead and McHarg). Since there seems to be a bit of confusion about what it is and what it isn’t I thought it deserved its own thread.
Trying to understand the purpose of the invention i.e. what problem does it solve the following paragraph stood out for me:
If I am reading this correctly it essentially describing a method of making arbitrary digital transmissions isochronous, something akin to isochronous USB. Another way of thinking about it would be “the opposite of SPDIF”, in other words a method of embedding a data stream in a clock signal as opposed to embedding a clock signal in a data stream.
A few points:
According to my reading this is describing a generic method for keeping audio devices synchronized when communicating in the digital domain. The application also makes mention of analog devices such as a headphone amplifier ([45] Page 12) although I am struggling to see any relevance outside the digital domain.
An obvious use case here would be keeping multiple mono DACs synchronized in stereo or multi-channel configurations (new flagship line??)
It is not wireless (at least not inherently). The mechanism described would seem to operate at the data link layer and not be tied to any specific physical layer implementation. However the application makes a couple of references to cables (16 in Fig. 1, page 2 and [46] page 12) giving the impression that wired connections are envisaged.
Will a new proprietary interconnect based on this invention be offered in the new flagship line? Who knows!
I may have got the wrong end of the stick here so interested in others’ take on this. What do you say @Anupc?
It reads like an intelligent Clock interconnect scheme with embedded control within the Clock stream, I think in order [to] dramatically simplify Clock modes. I’m guessing there’s no longer any need to specify Clock Sync modes, the system will detect and automatically keep everything in sync. Kind of like EasyPlay for Clocking maybe.
I think it is everything you say and more. I think the payload (“messages”) also contain the audio samples, i.e. it is clock, control and audio. As you say, we’ll soon find out…
I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. The Patent doc is pretty clear;
[01] The subject-matter of the present disclosure relates to a transmitter for a master clock of an audio system, and a receiver for an audio device of an audio system. More specifically, the transmitter and receiver are those able to transmit and receive a clock signal for synchronising audio devices within an audio system.
Plus, there’s no need to embed the audio stream within a clock signal since the ACTUS connector appears to have 12 pins. Clearly it’s composed of multiple signal flows, including this intelligent clock signals and presumably the actual audio streams (I’m very curious how they’re encoding the audio stream this time).
