ultra turbo low cost audio dac/adc (codecs) ?

[dav888]

now when we have $0.1/pcs arm mcu's.
I want to find basic stereo audio dac's and adc's, or ad+da in one at similar price points. like $0.1-0.2/pcs

anyone been doing research on the topic?

so many specialized brands out there that doesn't show up "online", neither on lcsc etc.
but you see them in weird product teardowns now and then, like toys that retails for nothing, still packed with features.

[dav888]

anyone?

[PCB.Wiz]

I want to find basic stereo audio dac's and adc's, or ad+da in one at similar price points. like $0.1-0.2/pcs

Basic and ultra turbo are opposite ends ?
Not many at down to 10c Lcsc have ADC 192kHz at ~30c ~ 25c/1k & DAC ~13/1k with simpler/older 16b dac as low as 6c

Maybe Nuvoton who do ad+da parts ?

[SiliconWizard]

The cheapest audio codec I could find from Nuvoton is the NAU88C10YG. It's $0.86 per 1 and $0.50 per 1000, not quite $0.1, but probably you can get close to that price by very large quantities.

[coppice]

The cheapest audio codec I could find from Nuvoton is the NAU88C10YG. It's $0.86 per 1 and $0.50 per 1000, not quite $0.1, but probably you can get close to that price by very large quantities.

Buy a decent production quantity and the price probably won't be much more than 10 cents. Its seems like quite a low performance and low complexity device. The oddity is not that this device is expensive in small numbers. Its that some MCUs are available so cheaply in small quantities. You usually need to buy at hundreds of thousands of parts to approach the lowest possible price, unless the part costs many dollars.

[dav888]

i'm fine with a part that can just do 44100/16, no fancyness

nuvoton is def. interesting. really tricky to find their price-lists online though.

any more exotic "no name brand" chips?

[SiliconWizard]

For Nuvoton, you can check their official prices there: https://direct.nuvoton.com/en/nau88c10yg

I don't know of any cheaper audio codec. There probably are, but the question will be to be able to source them and find documentation.

[dav888]

oh, totally missed their direct web. wishing every chip vendor will do this 2025

TI will champion this, analog devices too. more to follow


great tip on the codec, super nice price!

[ftg]

For just DAC, there is the almost generic 8211.
TM(Shenzhen Titan Micro Elec) calls it TM8211, $0.0676 at 500pcs on LCSC. 
PTC(Princeton Tech) calls it PT8211, $0.3402 at 500pcs on LCSC.

LCSC seems to also have CJC4334 from ESHINE, for $0.1424 at 500pcs.

Full codecs with both adc and dac integrated are annoyingly expensive in comparison.

SGTL5000 from NXP used to be affordable and actually available, but prices seem to have gone up.

[dav888]

now we're talking! amazingly cheap
...forgot to mention, my wish is to find one with low-power, 1.8V supply would be preferred

[ftg]

now we're talking! amazingly cheap
...forgot to mention, my wish is to find one with low-power, 1.8V supply would be preferred

The only 1V8 one I quickly recall are select TI TLV320AIC series of chips. Not even all of them seem to do 1V8.
Cheapest one on LCSC seems to be TLV320AIC3101IRHBR at $0.6575/500pcs.
And even then one of the supplies is minimum of 2.7V, so a boost converter would be required anyway.

Power Supplies:
– Analog: 2.7 V–3.6 V
– Digital Core: 1.65 V–1.95 V
– Digital I/O: 1.1 V–3.6 V

I would not be terribly surprised if there is some cellphone or portable media player oriented codec out there that runs from pure 1V8, but I don't recall any from the top of my head and all of my I2S stuff is 3V3.

Edit:fixed typo.

[Ice-Tea]

Not quite that price level but DA7212

[dav888]

yes, dialog has some 1.8V parts, thanks, still expensive for the sound quality they provide

cirrus used to have super-nice low power single-rail 1.8V parts, but they are all EOL now

[coppice]

yes, dialog has some 1.8V parts, thanks, still expensive for the sound quality they provide

cirrus used to have super-nice low power single-rail 1.8V parts, but they are all EOL now

They probably lost some major phone orders. Parts like that are very dependent on a handful of key customers.