Tone Board as HiFi DAC

Can I use Tone Board simply as a DAC ? I wish to feed its RCA input with digital signal from a radio Internet / DAB+ tuner and connect its 2 analog outputs to my HiFi amplifier, in which case I simply need to power it through its USB connector and mount it in a box. Correct ?

Yes! The SPDIF_IN of the Tone-board is fed directly into the ES9038Q2M for decoding. It should work as long as your device has SPDIF_OUT.

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Thank you. I am confused: SPDIF stands for optical connection, right? I did not realize that TB had an optical connector input. Anyway, my device has both coaxial and optical OUT connectors. Which cable shall I use from the optical connector of my device to the SPDIF_IN of the TB ?

Access the SPDIF signal from the pin marked with the red arrow in the picture.

spdif can appear on toslink (optical) or coax/BNC (electrical) sockets; we have only coaxial on the TB!

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Spdif and coaxial both use the same digital transport format, however the interfaces are different. We will feedback to our R & D team and considering to add a SPDIF interface to subsequent Tone Boards versions.
Thank you!

Thank you all, now I understand. So I will use the coax OUT of my device and connect it to the so-called SPDIF IN of TB.
For that application (DAC only), I understand no setup is needed, making a PC necessary.

So you cannot get audio signal from PC to USB?

I understood that I could connect with usb only, and output to my amp via rca output, as most DACs do.

Am I wrong about this? I must have coax input?

Thanks for any help.

hi, I think @vuille-jp did not say his device was a PC, it could be any appliance with an iec958 electric digital out

Our website details the features of the Ton Board. Thanks!

You need to use a USB-A to C cable…a direct usbc to usbc will not work or at least I haven’t had any successful attempts of the later. Either on my MacBookPro or IPad Pro

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