Pandora Sound Hardware

[wolfmanz51]

hows the quality of all the sound hardware used in the pandora?
I want to know about
-Headphone out
-Speakers (dont expect alot here but hey it is the pandora)
- Mic jack
- anything sound related

 

[WizardStan]

This has been answered in depth a couple of times already, with subsequent questions being answered with links back to the original topics.
Do a forum search for "burr". The sound comes from a (reportedly) high quality Brown Burr dac. Everything else you should find in the search I suggested.

 

[lulzfish]

Google results for "Pandora sound site:www.gp32x.de/board":

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50015-the-pandora-sound-chip/
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/45093-details-and-specs-of-the-pandoras-sound-card/

Forum search results for "sound" in thread titles only, in all Pandora boards, manually filtered to "What kinda hardware are we getting"-type threads, minus results Google already reported:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/45252-can-anyone-report-on-music-sound-quality/page__p__669095__hl__sound__fromsearch__1&#entry669095
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/42076-sound-quality/page__p__608848__hl__sound__fromsearch__1&#entry608848

Read those 4, then come back if you still have questions.

Search bot at your service. Whirrrr, beep.

The quality is supposed to be "good", but craig or someone said it's "not as loud as the iPhone" IIRC.
The mic is probably going to suck since mics are prone to doing that, especially mics built in to the chassis of a device.

 

[atomicthumbs]

The audio input is provided by the TV-out cable; it's a pair of RCA plugs (right and left).

 

[Shock-Socks]

how loud are the pandora's speakers?

 

[lulzfish]

The audio input is provided by the TV-out cable; it's a pair of RCA plugs (right and left).

Isn't there also a mic input on the headphone jack, for headsets that have microphones built-in somehow?

How loud MWeston says the speakers are.

tl;dr: "Comparable to the PSP-1000, DS lite, and even the GP2X F-100, but nowhere near as loud as the iPhone. Good for normal situations, but not loud enough for using on a crowded bus."

So it won't be as loud as my laptop, but in most situations it will be loud enough to, say, show someone a YouTube video or something.

 

[Gary13579]

how loud are the pandora's speakers?

The quality is supposed to be "good", but craig or someone said it's "not as loud as the iPhone" IIRC.

*coughs*

The audio input is provided by the TV-out cable; it's a pair of RCA plugs (right and left).

Isn't there also a mic input on the headphone jack, for headsets that have microphones built-in somehow?

Yes, there is audio input on TV Out cable, in the headphone jack (with adapter or headphones that support it), and the built in mic.

 

[borgqueenx]

wow and i already think the iphone doesnt go loud :S

 

[gibberish]

who really wants loud music coming from 2x 1" speakers though? it'll sound terrible. thats what dedicate external speakers are for.

 

[WizardStan]

Actually, this reminds me of a question that I had but never asked. I've reviewed all the previous discussions, but I may have just missed it.
Does anyone remember if the microphone input on the front audio jack is actually a microphone input, or is it line level? ie, if I've got a cheapo condenser mic, will it just work, or do I need a pre-amp?
I recently encountered this problem with my beagle board: I plugged in my microphone and didn't think it was actually working. Turns out I misunderstood that the audio in was line in, not microphone in. I'm hoping we all haven't made the same assumption about the microphone jack. It's a reasonable assumption, since it doesn't make sense to have two line in ports, but it's possible MWeston may have forgot something when designing the board.

 

[efegea]

Actually, this reminds me of a question that I had but never asked. I've reviewed all the previous discussions, but I may have just missed it.
Does anyone remember if the microphone input on the front audio jack is actually a microphone input, or is it line level? ie, if I've got a cheapo condenser mic, will it just work, or do I need a pre-amp?
I recently encountered this problem with my beagle board: I plugged in my microphone and didn't think it was actually working. Turns out I misunderstood that the audio in was line in, not microphone in. I'm hoping we all haven't made the same assumption about the microphone jack. It's a reasonable assumption, since it doesn't make sense to have two line in ports, but it's possible MWeston may have forgot something when designing the board.

Perhaps it's a stupid question, but could be that the condenser microphone didn't work because it (the input jack of the beagle) lacked phantom power? Or the microphone you plugged wasn't a condenser one?

 

[WizardStan]

Perhaps it's a stupid question, but could be that the condenser microphone didn't work because it (the input jack of the beagle) lacked phantom power? Or the microphone you plugged wasn't a condenser one?

No, it's definitely an unpowered condenser mic. I confirmed that it worked with line level inputs, but the microphone was just too quiet to be heard. It goes through my PC microphone jack just fine, after doing a mic boost. I did some research and every thing seems to say you need a pre-amp to plug a microphone into the beagleboard. Which is fine: line level and mic level are different, and if they had to pick one, I'd rather they pick the one that lets me plug an MP3 player into it directly. I'm just wondering if the same is true of the Pandora, or does the circuitry contain a mic boost on the microphone jack.

 

[urjaman]

I actually have a few questions related to pandora's sound hw;
is it possible to drive a mic input from the ext ports line out?
Eg. Is there a low enough volume setting(s) (thats not mute) for this?
Also, can the pandoras sound system direct audio from the internal mic to ext line out with minimal cpu usage?
Can it also direct ext line in to speakers while doing this?
Can the speakers,line out and headset line out play different audio streams?

Now, i want no guesses as answer; Either you have a pandora devboard and you tested stuff and/or you've read the correct datasheets and know the answer.

 

[WizardStan]

Now, i want no guesses as answer; Either you have a pandora devboard and you tested stuff and/or you've read the correct datasheets and know the answer.

Why do people keep writing this? Odds are pretty near to zero that you'll get such a specific answer.

 

[lulzfish]

I actually have a few questions related to pandora's sound hw;
is it possible to drive a mic input from the ext ports line out?
Eg. Is there a low enough volume setting(s) (thats not mute) for this?
Also, can the pandoras sound system direct audio from the internal mic to ext line out with minimal cpu usage?
Can it also direct ext line in to speakers while doing this?
Can the speakers,line out and headset line out play different audio streams?

* carefully examines the redirections *

So you want to use your Pandora as a speakerphone?
I don't know if the audio hardware is designed to handle those redirections, I don't think that's a usual task for sound chips.
But it would be nice if you could have separate streams for headphones / speakers, so you can mute the speakers as a fail-safe in case your headphones are unplugged in a public place.
I've never seen this implemented, though. Or not on my laptop, anyway. It seems like the kind of cool / useless thing a Macbook would have.

 

[dflemstr]

I actually have a few questions related to pandora's sound hw;
is it possible to drive a mic input from the ext ports line out?
Eg. Is there a low enough volume setting(s) (thats not mute) for this?
Also, can the pandoras sound system direct audio from the internal mic to ext line out with minimal cpu usage?
Can it also direct ext line in to speakers while doing this?
Can the speakers,line out and headset line out play different audio streams?

* carefully examines the redirections *

So you want to use your Pandora as a speakerphone?
I don't know if the audio hardware is designed to handle those redirections, I don't think that's a usual task for sound chips.
But it would be nice if you could have separate streams for headphones / speakers, so you can mute the speakers as a fail-safe in case your headphones are unplugged in a public place.
I've never seen this implemented, though. Or not on my laptop, anyway. It seems like the kind of cool / useless thing a Macbook would have.

Well, my PC can do this. I have 3 sound chips in this computer: an on-board Intel thing, a Creative X-Fi and an Asus Xonar, and each of them is able to play separate audio streams for speakers and headphones using PulseAudio (or at least if I use the "pavucontrol" tool and a config file; the GNOME built-in PulseAudio configuration applet isn't powerful enough (as most GNOME tools aren't... damn GNOME "usability standards"))

So yeah, I could technically have 3 headphones, 3 sets of 7.1 speakers, and 3 digital audio receivers playing different sound at once...

So don't say that you've never seen this implemented; I'm pretty sure that the Pandora will be able to do this as well (albeit with some limitations, probably).

 

[Pleng]

* carefully examines the redirections *

So you want to use your Pandora as a speakerphone?
I don't know if the audio hardware is designed to handle those redirections, I don't think that's a usual task for sound chips.

It's pretty common in pro-audio sound cards. Some kind of 'direct monitoring' solution is usually provided which routes the input directly to the output to avoid latency issues.

 

[lulzfish]

Well, now that I've seen dflemstr's computer, I have seen it.
However, my laptop only has the one output port, and it seems to be switched by a mechanical switch that detects the presence of headphones, and pavucontrol only shows one output port.

 

[urjaman]

* carefully examines the redirections *

So you want to use your Pandora as a speakerphone?
I don't know if the audio hardware is designed to handle those redirections, I don't think that's a usual task for sound chips.
But it would be nice if you could have separate streams for headphones / speakers, so you can mute the speakers as a fail-safe in case your headphones are unplugged in a public place.
I've never seen this implemented, though. Or not on my laptop, anyway. It seems like the kind of cool / useless thing a Macbook would have.

well there's a GPRS modem with phone ability at dealextreme (sorry for not linking, browsing with n6630) that i'd like to attach to the pandora's ext (and usb) port . . . - and yeah i know that there might not be sw and/or drivers for this ready, but i can write the sw if needed.

 

[Paradox]

who really wants loud music coming from 2x 1" speakers though? it'll sound terrible. thats what dedicate external speakers are for.

it's a portable handheld.......