Maintaining their position as leaders in the development, design and manufacture of innovative MADI products, RME have announced that the new MADI Router is now shipping in the UK. The RME MADI Router is the successor to the MADI Bridge and MADI Converter which has for years been essential tools for many studio, live and broadcast engineers.
The MADI Router is a compact device designed to link MADI devices of any manufacturer with unprecedented flexibility in signal routing. It provides this flexibility by simultaneously serving as a format converter between optical and electrical signals as a signal repeater, and as a distributor and merger of several MADI signals. The MADI Router combines many advantages of point-to-point audio connections, such as low latency and fast recovery time from signal line interruptions, with the flexibility of networked audio connections in which any device has access to any channel available on the network of connected devices.
At the simplest level, input signals are passed on to the desired output unaltered. This type of connection is beneficial when manufacturers have embedded additional status or remote control data information in the MADI stream.
It is also possible to create new configurations of audio channels within a MADI output stream. For this purpose, four independent matrices are provided, each one reflecting 768 IN x 64 OUT audio channels. Any channel of any valid MADI input stream may be source to each crosspoint matrix. The output of each matrix can then be passed on to any of the 12 MADI Routers output
The MADI Router is designed to be simple and easy to operate. It is the only MADI routing device on the market that can be completely programmed and controlled without the help of external remote control software. In order to achieve this capability, a TFT display has been integrated on the front panel. It conveniently shows the current state of the device and leads the user through all required settings that are needed to set up a network. User interaction is conducted by four buttons and two rotary encoders surrounding the display.
The complete state of the device is saved with any user interaction (AutoSave) and automatically recalled within ten seconds after the unit is switched back on. Additionally, 15 internal presets let users save and recall, as well as preview and preselect routings.
On its back, the device provides a variety of connectors to achieve maximum compatibility and versatility for a broad range of different use cases. Four optical and four coaxial MADI inputs are accepting MADI signals at any sampling rate and channel format, the outputs carry either a refreshed or one of the four newly created MADI signals over distances of up to 200m (coaxial) or 2000m (optical).
A novelty among RME devices are the MADI TP ports. These four combined in- and outputs bring MADI to common twisted pair network cables that can directly connect MADI TP devices over distances of up to 150m while passing on power along with the MADI signals. The four MADI TP ports provide sufficient power for the AES3 and ADAT Converters.
All twelve MADI ports are completely independent but grouped symmetrically in four sections ‘A’ to ‘D’ for quick identification. A word clock input may be used as reference to any of the four routing matrices or simply be refreshed and passed on to the output. The word clock output can further provide the extracted word clock signal from any of the 12 MADI inputs.
Two redundant 100W switching power supplies provide sufficient power for the MADI Router itself plus up to eight additional passive devices that draw their power from the MADI TP connections. The AC inlets support a locking mechanism that can be used with optional AC power cords.