DirectOut Technologies has announced the shipping of its latest sample rate converter, the MADI.9648, which was first seen at the recent ISE and Prolight + Sound shows.

This new hardware addition to DirectOut’s portfolio of audio converters is based on simple, straightforward design and lowest possible conversion latency. With its solid and reliable hardware, MADI.9648 is the perfect solution for live setups.

High-end live mixing consoles are increasingly operating at 96kHz. In practice, however, the mix of different system components typically involves both 48kHz and 96kHz operation, which can be very challenging for a sound engineer. With MADI.9648, network specialist DirectOut offers a MADI sample-rate converter that addresses this problem in an easy and reliable way.

Equipped with eight MADI ports, the device provides four independent SRC blocks for bidirectional conversion of 128 audio channels. A 1 FS MADI stream with 64 audio channels is converted into two 2 FS MADI streams carrying 32 channels each. Conversely, two 2 FS streams are converted and combined into a single 1 FS stream.

MADI.9648 features six BNC ports (in keeping with the interfaces widely found on live mixing consoles), while two optical SC ports extend the connection options for 1 FS signals. This enables easy integration of external equipment with most current live consoles operating at 96kHz. With the plug-and-play design of MADI.9648 there is nothing to adjust – a fixed signal routing and automatic signal detection of frame format and channel mode facilitate the installation.

“The new MADI.9648 offers many nice features in a single device,” states Jan Ehrlich, CEO and Sales Manager at DirectOut. “Of course, the focus is the exchange and the processing of audio signals at a very low latency – especially for live applications. Our development team achieved this target with a round-trip latency of just eight samples (1FS-2FS-1FS). The product hits an attractive price point, particularly when you consider that it also provides format conversion. Furthermore, the 1RU design saves space, as combined systems are larger.”