I'm very interested in the audio expander, it suits my requirements well and is soooo much cheaper than a ctag.
Searching the forum suggests many are unhappy with the noise performance of the audio expander but I'm aware that people usually only post when there is an issue. Are there users out there satisfied with their audio expanders? I'm specifically curious about the inputs, I understand there are different problems with the outputs but I don't need those for audio.
Can anyone give a rough ballpark figure for the SNR using audio expander inputs?
Is the noise a continuous broadband hiss kinda ting or are we talking about weird digital noises, clocks n clicks etc?
The audio input pins are 0 to 5v which is significantly higher than line level. I'm guessing (but would like to check) the gain stage of the audio expander swings rail to rail giving the full 5v into the audio ins?
Has anyone tried using a compander type system? This could be implemented using the compressor from something like an NE570 or SSM2166 ( https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data-sheets/SSM2166.pdf ) in conjunction with an expander on the digital side. Could significantly reduce noise levels on certain inputs (like my violin!)?
Bonus question: If only 2 extra ins were required the analog in could be set to 88.1khz. That means the broadband noise from the adc would be spread over twice the frequency range. Downsampling to 44.1khz in Bela would then discard half the noise along with the 22050 to 44100 frequencies? Am I understanding that correctly?