Arduino “Soundcard”

DAC-Based WAV-Player on a breadboard with MCP4921 and TDA7052




soundcard breadboard




This breadboard assembly is an alternative to the Adafruit Wave Shield, which can read .wav files from an SD card and uses a 12 bit digital to analog converter (MCP4921) with an audio amplifier to give the microcontroller audio output. While building the wave shield on a breadboard I found that the sound quality of used opamp was somewhat poor, so I replaced it with a small audio amp chip. This resulted in better audio quality and higher output power.




arduino soundcard




The schematic is self-explanatory. The design is very simple and can be brought into a breadboard-friendly form factor. For connection details of the SD card check out the wave shield schematic.




Note: I’ve forgotten to include a 10nF low-pass-filter capacitor between the input pin of the TDA7052 and ground. It is not obligatory but removes some noise, so you might try that when replicating this device.

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