TOPIC:

Hello!

So, I have a fairly unique need, it seems. I would like to get lots of channels of AES/EBU into and out of a computer, via USB, without dealing with the cost of a Horus or a buggy box from MOTU.

Can multiple UDIO-8's be connected to a computer, and addressed by the same driver? For example, to create 16x16 or 24x24 I/O in a DAW?

A product suggestion that might garner a lot of sales in the studio world is having an AES to AVB box-there seems to be little to no cost effective solutions for what appears to be a fairly simple conversion. The MOTU 112D doesn't work well when fed multiple inputs, and a Horus (which works on Ravenna/AES67) is $5k without any analog I/O.

Any thoughts?

My current plan is to expand in units of 8 with A/D and D/A converters that are reference quality and balanced-not that the MiniDSP circuits are lacking, but I'd rather future proof my A/D and D/A.

My other product suggestion would basically to make a stable device that'll do 32x32 channels of AES/EBU I/O over ethernet and can be clocked to an external word clock. Just a thought.

@ vinyldavid

Interesting application indeed..
- If you have multiple UDIO8, you'd need to a way to do "aggregate" sound card. OSx handles this by default. What's your OS?
- AVB to AES-EBU (in/out) would be possible. .. Just need a little change to the driver of AVB-DG I guess..

Check out the NDAC8 (AVBDG + miniDAC8). www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/u-dio8
It's possible to get a AVB-DG + AES-EBU io card that is indeed the UDIO8. But note that it would only support 48k though..

Here is the pics of inside of NDAC8 (right) vs UDIO8(left)




If there is indeed some interest, we could consider building that box. Would be similar to the UDIO8 but with an Ethernet port instead..

DevTeam

Hello!

Thank you for the reply.

Without being too verbose, here's what I'm trying to do:

My application stems from the desire to use really high end converters (in my case, Mytek 8X192's) in a recording/transfer studio situation in an expandable way with Windows 10, at higher sample rates (24/96 and 24/192). I can live with 24/96 to begin with. The cost of the converters is high, so buying 8ch at a time allows me to get top end converters without dropping an unmanageable sum.

The only commercial products I'm aware of that offer a solution for this are the MOTU 112D (which my boss has, and was buggy), and the Merging Technologies Horus, which my boss also has, and has been the bane of my existence, since I am terrible at networked audio troubleshooting, coming from legacy firewire equipment.

At this juncture, I only have one 8 channel converter, but would eventually like to expand to 24x24 or 32x32. I also have other gear that interfaces through AES, including DAT machines, a TDIF-AES converter for Tascam DTRS machines, a cool Benchmark 2404-96 A/D that sounds awesome, and will probably come up with a lot more. Keeping the ability to go out to AES/EBU enables easy patching, one-off setups, and most external high end converters come with the option for AES.

For those of us that don't need anything but a box that can lock to a wordclock, lock the computer (or at least the DAW to that wordclock), and give lots of channels of highrez AES to our software, I think such a product would be superb! No sample rate conversion or anything.... I could be alone in this need, but I doubt it.

Best, David

@ David

Ok, I see.. In that case, if you need high sample rate + external wordclock (AVB already does so, so not sure why you'd need another wordclock gen on top) + no sample rate conversion (AVB module would need to automatically change/adapt rate = not as easy when it comes to AVB) then the solution we provided above won't work as there is a limitation on the AVB-DG (can't go above 8ch). Maybe in the future we can see if possible but no plans/no promise can be made I'm afraid.

DevTeam

@devteam

It's a unique need, I am sure...basically, I need a Lynx AES16e, but that works with a laptop. I don't like the idea of going through a sample rate converter, so keeping everything locked to the same clock (which would either be from the ADC or an external device like an Apogee Big Ben or Antelope), is preferable for me.

Oh well. I do realize that AES is sort of a dead format, but there are so many nice sounding high end converters out there!

Last question, (I hope!). Is there a way to an aggregate sound card in Windows? If there is, I can just buy two UDIO-8's and be happy/done with it.

I lied.

Last last question.

Can I buy extra DB25-XLR AES cables? Didn't see them on the website.

THANK YOU.

-David

David

On Windows, we've heard of software like Jack Audio (www.jackaudio.org/) or ASIO4ALL being able to do so (i.e. link ASIO cards) but to be honest we haven't tested so don't know much.

We don't sell the DB-25 to XLR but could do so by demand via our online tech support tix. (support.minidsp.com)

DevTeam