av murgatroyd » 2015-06-14 23:20
S/PDIF is used to transmit digital signals of a number of formats, the most common being the 48 kHz sample rate format (used in DAT) and the 44.1 kHz format, used in CD audio. In order to support both systems, as well as others that might be needed, the format has no defined data rate. Instead, the data is sent using biphase mark code, which has either one or two transitions for every bit, allowing the original word clock to be extracted from the signal itself.
S/PDIF is meant to be used for transmitting 20-bit audio data streams plus other related information. To transmit sources with less than 20 bits of sample accuracy, the superfluous bits will be set to zero. S/PDIF can also transport 24-bit samples by way of four extra bits; however, not all equipment supports this, and these extra bits may be ignored.
With one exception, S/PDIF protocol is identical to AES3. The channel status bit differs in S/PDIF. There is one channel status bit in each subframe, making 384 bits in each audio block. The meaning of the channel status bits is completely different between AES3 and S/PDIF. For S/PDIF, the 192-bit block for each channel is divided into 12 words of 16 bits each. The first 6 bits of the first word are a control code. The meaning of its bits are shown in the accompanying table.
'Audiophile in hibernation'