AES Outputs

dLive dLive Feature Suggestions
1

This is to build on a suggestion I made to Jack in the I/O ive stream today.

Scenario
S7000 with DM64. S class redundant features used wherever possible. DM64 fitted with GigaAce card for dual surface capability when needed, Waves v3 card, 128ch Dante card.
DX ports sometimes used for alternative I/O, always redundant so only 2 effective ports available in pairs.
Want to drive amplifiers with AES primary and analogue as a backup (Crown vRacks).

In order to get AES outputs there are a number of options at present but each has its own negatives.

Any of the AES I/O cards - good solution but all Mixrack card slots in use. Relocating existing cards to surface not ideal as Waves servers are racked with MixRack, GigaAce needs to be in MixRack for multi-surface and Dante is most sensibly located in MixRack too.
DX012 - Single power supply and uses up one of the 2 DX port pairs (or both if duplicated SL/SR). Power supply failure would be bad but not catastrophic if analogue backups are in place.
DX32 with AES out card - overcomes single PSU issue of DX012 but still uses a pair of DX ports and is expensive in terms of rack space and monetary cost.
Dante to AES converter, something like a Focusrite Rednet D16R - maybe the best solution at present but expensive and may introduce additional unnecessary latency?

Suggestion.
The DM64 has way more analogue outputs than I am ever going to need, with more available on DX168s etc.
If a replacement MixRack internal I/O card were available with 2 stereo AES outs instead of the 4 analogue ones like used to be available for the iLive this would give us some AES outputs with none of the above downsides.
Yeah I get that it would be a factory-fit option but that was available for iLive as a return-to-dealer change.

If only Itech HDs could recieve Dante instead of CobraNet, although the extra latency would still be there.

2

For the money it cost you can have a backup dx012, the amps aren’t redundent, the microphones aren’t redundent.

It is impossible to get every thing redundent.

This is my opinion.

Maybe this is an option?

https://www.ntp.dk/NTP-2018/PRODUCTS/Penta-721s

3

There are many Dante to AES options out there, as usual as soon as you add Dante to a product they are expensive.
The redundancy thing is just me overengineering things as usual.
Yes there are other single points of failure but anything I can do to reduce those in places which would bring the entire show to a stop I will do.
Lose 1 amp or 1 mic and generally the show goes on. Lose a single rackmounted piece of kit that all of your critical signal flow goes through not so much.
Lots of options just non ideal, I’ll probably end up with a DX012 considering there will be ananloge backup feeds but it does mean losing 2 or maybe ultimately all 4 DX ports if I repeat for both sides of the stage and running 2 more Cat5s with the analogue multi to the amp racks. Or maybe a RedNet, I’m torn at the moment.
If I had AES onboard the mixrack I could run both the AES and the analogue down the same 8 pair multi (they are AES compliant) and all the redundancy, latency and I/O resource usage issues would be sorted.

Ultimately A&H making stuff like this available is a question of customer demand rather than anything technical.
Just thought I’d put the idea out there and see if anyone else would benefit from being able to swap 4 analogue outs to 2 stereo AES onboard.
This option was available for iLive, maybe with the vastly greater expandability of dLive it’s not commercially viable but if you don’t ask…