[LAU] Jack Audio Appliance?

[Len Ovens]

On Fri, 16 Dec 2016, Schatzman, James wrote:

> Is there a Jack Audio Appliance commercially available?
>
> If not, I would like to build one. Here are my requirements
>
> 1) Accepts 4 or more input audio streams at Xonar 7 rates (24-bit 
> channels at 192KHz).

So not audio then. What is the actual frequency you are interested in? 
Audio is 20 to 20k, so 48k sample rate. Even ADCs that will output 96k 
(let alone 192k) may have the input frequency range tied well below 30k by 
the analog circuitry. So an off the shelf solution for what you are doing 
is unlikely.

> 2) Makes the audio streams available to Jack clients on the network.

May I suggest zita-njbridge for network clients? It seems more stable than 
jack-net if SRC is ok.

> 3) Is compact and reliable.

As you would be building it, size and reliablility are in your hands :)

> What would be a reasonable compact platform to host such a device 
> (processor speed/cores, memory, etc.)?

One of the multicore Atom chips would be my choice, they deal well with 
low latency audio in my experience (sometimes better than i3-7 and much 
easier to deal with than arm)

> Also, is it feasible to jack up the data rates even higher - say to 
> several megasamples per second?

This is the statement that made me feel that it was not audio you are 
interested in. It also makes me wonder why the 24 bit spec, I suspect 16 
would be fine. high frequency ADCs that I have looked at are mostly 8-12 
bit. Fine for making an oscilliscope for example. If you are doing rf 
work, I don't know how far down the noise floor needs to be to keep BW 
down... I just havn't played with it at all. That would determine the 
needed bit depth.

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net