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  1. Member
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    India
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    hi,

    i was working on one of the motherboards(a custom made) where i came to see an audio codec chip ac97 compliant LM4550.

    what is the main function of audio codec chip.
    i have gone through the chip datasheet and there were pins like Stereo input/mono input and line out left as well right as output.

    what exactly does and audio codec chip take as input and deliver us the output.

    if i play a song on winamp what is the functionality of the audio codec chip here.i say song is the input but does this codec amplifies the song and delivers it to the speakers.

    thanks
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  2. The chip is the sound system of your motherboard. It is the connecting bridge between your loudspeaker sockets, microphone/line input and the microprocessor data bus.

    It contains the circuits the convert analog sound inputs to numbers (an ADC or Analog to Digital Converter) and the opposite functions to convert numbers to analog voltages to produce sound outputs (a DAC or Digital to Analog Converter).

    Most likely, it sits on your motherboards PCI bus as though it was a sound card plugged into a PCI socket but wired directly to the rest of the board so the plug/socket isn't needed.

    When you play a song, the file is read by the microprocessor (Pentium etc.), some math is done on the numbers to reconstruct a numerical image of the original sound, this is then sent to the DAC in the chip to turn it into a voltage. Finally, the voltage is amplified to make it suitable to drive loudspeakers and fed to the sockets on the computer back panel.

    Crash course in electro-acoustics over - you can go back to sleep now.

    Brian.
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