Format Conversion

[sr1200]

Anyone familiar with the new(er) digital formats, like AES50, Dante, etc.?
I was looking for something to convert old AES or ADAT to AES50 and it seems theres only ONE device on the market that can do such a thing and its quite expensive.

 

[soulsonic]

The Ferrofish Pulse 16 DX can route between Dante, MADI and ADAT with 16 analog I/O. I'm spec'ing it into the studio I'm designing to handle Dante routing to MADI and vice versa. It's not "cheap," but it seems the most reasonably priced way to do this.

Maybe using something like a Euphonix FC-726 to convert the AES signals to MADI might open up your options? I'm not sure if that would or not, I haven't looked deeply at it yet.

 

[ccaudle]

it seems theres only ONE device on the market

There is definitely more than one, but probably not super commonly available.
What do you consider "quite" expensive? There is a Appsys device that Full Compass has for right at $1000. I think one of the modular DirectOut devices could have a combination of AES-3 and AES50 modules and do what you need.
Actually, now that I look at that $1000 Appsys device I think that is just for the AES-3 module, and you would have to be another module to add the AES50 capability.

Hmmm...I think I have to walk back my "definitely more than one" comment, The DirectOut devices can convert AES3 to MADI, but not to AES50.

You could try a Midas DL155 stage box, that uses AES50 for the connection to the console, and has 8 channels of AES3 in and out.

 

[soulsonic]

Does it have to be AES50 specifically? If you're starting from scratch with designing a networked audio system, it might be best to work backwards from what existing equipment you want to integrate and compare that to equipment that is available and what your budget is, and let that decide which of the systems you decide on. In the case of our system, the reason why we're using Dante is because there are already other existing Dante networks in the building and want to be able to integrate with them. If I were starting from scratch, I'd probably go with something else, but it is what it is.

 

[sr1200]

No, it has to be AES50. We were looking at the new behringer personal mixers for a distributed headphone replacement to our aging hearback system. The other thing this uses is Behringer Stage connect which we dont have either. It seems this is going to be way more pricey than we expected to turn one digital format into another. ONLY thing we've found as a standalone module is the AppSys thing which is around $1300-1400 for the parts you need to do it and is only 8 or 16 channels i think. Cheaper option is to just get a behringer digital mixer that will ouput stage connect or AES50 but only has 18 channels. Ideally we were hoping for 24 channels which means we'd have to go with the 32 channel mixer, but thats probably not practical. It seems this whole endeavor just doesn't seem to make sense to try using what we have already in the studio.