Delfina "Flipper Edition" Soundcard for Amiga 1200

The soundcard Delfina "Flipper Edition" is a cooperation of individual computers (Germany) with the developer team of Petsoff (Finland). The hardware design was licensed and improved by far. All known features of the Delfina Plus remain:

• DSP56002, 73,7Mhz, 96KByte memory, 12ns speed
• Codec: 16 bit, 48khz (other frequencies were played back by re-sampling)
• Outputs: Stereo-RCA
• Inputs: 2x Stereo-RCA, CD-input internally
• Interface: 16-Bit Zorro-II
• recording and playback Simultaneously (full duplex)
• AHI-drivers with an unlimited amount of virtual channels

You think this is already impressive? There is nothing that can't be improved! Since re-sampling may cause drawbacks in sound quality, the Delfina Flipper can playback standard frequencies (32khz and 44.1khz) without the need to re-sample, thus having no loss in sound quality.

The original Delfina was delivered with a 66Mhz DSP, overclocked to 73.7 Mhz. Since the revised version does not use the technique of re-sampling any more, overclocking was reduced to a moderate degree to make the Delfina work reliably in all enviroments. Despite the reduction to 67,73 Mhz, more calculation power is left for the user, because re-sampling is not necessary.

Delfina Flipper is split into two cards. The "Delfina module" carries the digital signal processor, memory and the analog inputs and outputs. This module has two interfaces to the computer: One clock-port for the A1200, and a 26-pin expansion port that is available on all of individual computers' Zorro cards. With these interfaces, the module is ready to be used with nearly every classic Amiga!

There are a lot of sound connectors: Three stereo inputs with regular sensitivity, and one stereo input with increased sensitivity for a microphone. The output is not using mini stereo connectors as most other soundcards do, but RCA connectors, because these allow a better sound quality.

The second board is the so-called "Flipper-interface". It uses technology known from the Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper: The board can be used in a classic Amiga, as well as in a PCI slot.

The Delfina module is simply attached to the Flipper interface. This expands the Delfina with SP-DIF connectors that allow digital connection to HiFi devices like DAT, Minidisc and CD-Recorders. Musicians will like the MIDI connectors: One MIDI-in and one MIDI-out can be programmed independently of each other.

The Zorro interface has been re-designed from scratch. With the Delfina Flipper it is shown for the first time that the slightly outdated Zorro bus can do much more than the engineers at Commodore have intended when they developed the bus system: the performance was simply doubled. With usual values of about 5.2MB/second (theoretical value 7MB/second), it's possible to playback more AHI channels than any other soundcard did before. In full-duplex mode (record and playback at the same time) this data rate can be split, but if you only record, the known limits apply to the Delfina Flipper. Of course, this performance is only reached with a 68020 or higher processor.

The clockport of the A1200 cannot reach the data performance of the Zorro-bus, but it's still fast enough to playback several AHI channels, and of course to playback MP3 files. A player-program that can output this popular audio format at best quality is included. That means that with the Delfina Flipper, the MP3 module is already included in the price!