In an audio system, I am reading samples from an sd card and sending those back to a 16 bits DAC for audio playback.
My prototype works but is too noisy. I discovered than using 2 separate Vcc/3.3V (provided thus by 2 different regulators) is helping quite a bit. So the MCU and Micro sd card are powered by regulator 1, and the DAC by regulator 2. I also separated physically on the board the analog from the digital circuitry.
The last thing I want to do, is to use 2 ground AGND and DGND.
The question is : If I can afford it "spacewise", is it a clever idea to use a top ground pour as the DGND and the bottom ground pour as AGND ? They would rejoin only at the power entry connector.
Best Answer
you'll have a lot of capacitive coupling between the two planes - you're better off putting all the analog in one clean place, with a single ground plane, connected to the rest of the world at just one point (so digital ground currents don't decide to take a short cut across it), and a carefully decoupled single power supply point