Topic: M-madi or EtherSound for recording? | Allen & Heath Digital Community

M-madi or EtherSound for recording?

This topic contains 4 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by woutert 14 years, 3 months ago.

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2010/01/05 at 11:07 pm #22238

muzikant
Participant

Hello, just got the T112/IDR48 for our church and trying to figure out the best way to get direct outs for recording purposes. Need a minimum of 24ch. What would be the advantages of getting EtherSound over M-Madi besides less cable to run? The few dealers i’ve spoken to have very limited knowledge.. Where is a good place to buy?

Thank you for your time..

Ruslan

iLive T112/IDR48

2010/01/06 at 10:33 am #25039

Stealth
Moderator

Hi Ruslan

quote:

What would be the advantages of getting EtherSound over M-MADI besides less cable to run?

Both EtherSound and MADI carry up to 64 Channels of bidirectional audio.

MADI requires 2 75 Ohm Coaxial cables for bidirectional (Record and playback) transmission; EtherSound only requires 1 cat5e cable.

For direct recording purposes there is no major advantage with using EtherSound over MADI

EtherSound becomes more of an advantage when creating larger Audio networks as all I/O routing can be controlled remotely from a laptop on the EtherSound network.

Below is a link to our american distributor:
https://www.allen-heath.com/distributors/distributor.asp?v=229

Hope this helps

Regards
Sam A&H

2010/01/06 at 10:48 am #25040

woutert
Participant

Audio quality is the same for all solutions, since it’s just tranport of digital data so… price, connectivity and ease-of-use matter.

Ethersound: 64 channels of 24-bit/48 kHz PCM audio, standard Ethernet cables and components.

+: standard network cable and components.
-: more expensive interfaces, due to the licensing.

MADI: The MADI format is capable of transmitting up to 64 audio channels (at standard sample rates of 44.1 or 48 kHz) on a standard 75 Ohms coaxial cable or an optical fibre cable. The 64-Channel mode was introduced officially in 2001. It allows for a maximum sample rate of 48 kHz + ca. 1%, corresponding to 32 channels at 24-bit / 96 kHz

+: less expensive interfaces.
-: coaxial cable (or optical) and not standard network cable and components…

OTHER (cheaper) solution: get the mini multi out card and use 3 times ADAT (so 24* 24-bit 48kHz)
If longer cablerun needed…
route the ADAT through this ADAT mulicore system: https://www.appsys.ch/
front: https://www.appsys.ch/images/stories/adx32a_adx64a/front_1600.jpg
dealer: https://www.musicstore.de/en_EN/CHF/Application-Systems-ADX-32A-/art-REC0007400-000

(only minus: this also uses a layer1 or less protocol so direct cablerun needed, not hubs or routers can be used… cfr. my recent topic)

+: very cheap, a quite standard cheap PCI ADAT card an be used in the recording computer. (https://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_hdsp_9652.php). Audio quality remains the same.
-: uh… direct cablerun needed, and the tiny ADAT optical cables of course

Wouter

2010/01/06 at 9:39 pm #25046

muzikant
Participant

Thanks for explaining it to me so well

I’m thinking MADI is my best solution as I want to run audio out.

Do I need to run a separate cable for word clock or will i be ok with just the in and our cables?

iLive T112/IDR48

2010/01/12 at 4:39 pm #25069

woutert
Participant

Hi Muzikant,

If you’re not too much under time pressure I would wait for “Dante”. I think this is a 1000 times more interesting than MADI, which seems to be a pretty old-fashioned standard when you look at this:
https://www.audinate.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=92

Yamaha just started marketing this 2 days ago, Allen&Heath next?

Wouter
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