DirectOut Technologies has significantly expanded the capabilities of its recently released EXBOX.MD Dante/MADI interface, with a major firmware and software update.

The German networking and pro audio specialist company previewed the updated EXBOX.MD at the AES Milan 2018 Convention, demonstrating it to be one of the most flexible Dante bridges presently on the market. Concurrently, EXBOX.MD has been integrated in the new ‘globcon’ global control software, where the new features are fully supported.

The highlight of the enhancements is the innovative EARS (Enhanced Automatic Redundancy Switching) technology, which was designed by DirectOut to improve reliability of digital multichannel audio systems. EARS offers different modes of operation and methods of triggering automatic input switching in a comfortable and reliable way.

“Leveraging the experience and the feedback related to our EXBOX.BLDS – an automatic redundancy switch for MADI systems we introduced five years ago – we have acquired the knowledge necessary to design and enhance failover-systems,” says DirectOut CTO, Stephan Flock. “The EXBOX.MD is the world’s first Dante/MADI interface to offer automatic redundancy switching in different modes, such as our popular BLDS mode for immediate in-sample switching or a pilot tone trigger. An engineer is now able to improve the redundancy of a playout or multichannel audio system within a Dante-based audio network, no matter whether it is using Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic, Pyramix or any other current DAW software.”

The upgrade also adds a channel-based routing matrix to allow access to all inputs and outputs, and offers the option to present new output streams to the Dante and MADI domains.

Further building on its ability to provide extremely reliable and flexible MADI systems interfacing, DirectOut has extended options to configure the unit’s MADI outputs, including for 48/96kHz operation and 64/57/56 channel settings, with all modes supported and detected automatically on inputs.