AK5388 High-performance ADC Breakout Board

The AK5388 breakout board on its schematicThis breakout board is for prototyping with the AK5388, a 24-bit analog-to-digital converter with stellar performance, including 123 dB signal-to-noise (SNR, A-weighted). It includes such features as dedicated power supplies and the hefty decoupling capacitors needed for good noise performance. Designed for use in radio receivers but applicable in any high-performance audio application, the breakout can rest directly on top of a copper-clad ground plane as a component in larger skywired projects. The back side has no vias or traces other than ground, so there is nothing that can short to the groundplane.

The AK5388 ADC breakout board is an ongoing project. The resources below will evolve as the project matures.

Features

  • Designed for the AKM Semiconductor AK5388 in LQFP-44.
  • Can be mounted directly on a ground plane.
  • On-board analog (5V) and digital (3.3V) power supplies.
  • All analog I/Os pinned out.
  • All configuration pins brought out — can support any AK5388 mode.
  • PCB layout designed to maximize SNR.

Files

Creative Commons Attribution License ButtonAK5388 Breakout Board by Stephen Trier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Posts

3 thoughts on “AK5388 High-performance ADC Breakout Board”

  1. Hey Stephen,

    I’m working on prototyping a product right now (a personal project at the moment) and I’m leaning towards using the AKM AK5388 for the ADCs. I was also looking at the ADI AD1974. I’m between the two.

    I need 16 channels of audio in and will be feeding that audio into an ADI AD1940 SigmaDSP. I’ve thought about purchasing a few of the AD1974 dev boards but it’s a bit expensive. I’m a bit of a hobbyist with electronics and don’t have a huge amount of time (and admittedly enough experience) to just go right into building a real prototype on a single board at the moment, so I was thinking I’d just buy the dev boards and get the prototyping working and then build the real thing after.

    What caught my attention about the AK5388 was the dynamic range and similar price point to the AD1974.

    My question is though, is the roughly 15 db difference in dynamic range hugely noticeable or is this just a small difference when sampling that doesn’t amount to much more quality?

    Just between ADCs at the moment.

  2. Hi,
    first of all, thanks to share your work!
    AN interesting thing would be to see the resulting noise
    at the input of your adc.

    tomaok

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