German pro audio specialist, DirectOut Technologies, has announced a new hardware version of its popular EXBOX.BLDS automatic redundancy switch. As a result of requests from FOH engineers all over the world, the hardware – which has proved to be a life-safer for big playout systems in live environments – will ship with a modular MADI interface in order to cover all applications and formats in multichannel MADI systems.

CTO Stephan Flock explains the reason for a new hardware revision five years after its launch: ‘EXBOX.BLDS has always been a special product for DirectOut, since it is one of our typical problem-solving solutions. Very many live systems and broadcast environments worldwide rely on our fail-over hardware to ensure proper signal transmission in redundant recording setups or playout rigs.’

However, one of the limitations of the EXBOX.BLDS hardware has been the fixed design of its MADI I/O, which means that it was unable to provide all BNC or SFP configurations.

Stephan Flock continues, ‘While BNC MADI is still very popular, especially in live systems where DiGiCo and Avid consoles are predominant, the flexible SFP format is the preferred option for broadcasters. As a result of this, we decided to eliminate this last little deficit by designing a hardware with modular MADI.IOs – for everybody using MADI.’

The new hardware design of EXBOX.BLDS is based on the MADI modules DirectOut uses in its SG.MADI SoundGrid interface. In this way, users are not only able to receive any configuration of the two MADI ports as required but are also able to change this configuration in the future.

The new EXBOX.BLDS with modular MADI interface will make its debut in Europe at IBC 2018 show, and in the US at the 145th AES Convention in New York. Shipping starts end of 2018.

IBC2018 Exhibition, stand 8.E85, RAI Convention Center, Amsterdam
AES NEW YORK 2018, stand 531, Javits Convention Center NYC, US