JLM>
fast and clean mic pre
Rochey: there's your snippet for the billboard outside the next AES convention. Joe hand-makes excellent amps, so this is high praise for a chip.
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The small control panel I made for my relay pot circuit could easily be used ... I don't really have a use for it - I like having a big rotary switch for gain selection...
There are rotary encoders, but you still need a read-out.
No reason you could not use a 12-position switch, some mickey-mouse logic, and a shift-register to walk the bits into the chip. The 12-position switch is its own read-out, non-volatile, and familiar feel. Tie the wiper to +5V, use a diode-array so each position pulls-up the desired bits, resistor pull-down (speed is not an issue), into a shift register. You could have a "Do It!" button to make the shift-register run, or maybe it can run 10 times a second if the chip does not glitch. Or get really clever with some caps to sense when bits have changed and trigger a shift.
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to run pro +24dBM level out you need another stage
Yes, but TI is betting that analog outputs and line-levels are going-away. Or that there is a market in totally-internal interfacing. For those of us who have 2 to 8 preamps and like to see wires, Pro-level will be around a long time. But TI won't get rich on us. OTOH there are those fully automated and all-digital workstations that eat mike-amps two or four dozen at a time, and sell for many kilobucks, and everything is software. The few stray analog parts need to be digi-controlled because all the controls are just software. In that world, 5V or +/-5V or p-p+/-5V is ample for an ADC sitting right next to the preamp chip. We don't have to overwhelm all the noise from here to Kalamazo (broadcast +8dBm phoneline levels) or a large recording studio (+4dBm). We do have to dodge all the digital noise inside a 95% digital box, but that is the workstation company's problem.
Think back. Data modems used RS-232 +/-12V levels, because anything less didn't overwhelm noise. RS-422(?) used +5 differential, and really does work better. And now many modems are in the same box with the CPU, interfaced as +3V just as reliable as any other signal in the PC. RS-232 +/12V is an anachronism.