Announcing the series, Optocore director, Tine Helmle, said: "We believe this to be the best solution for the professional AV market, largely because it is now a common standard - with MADI ports frequently used by manufacturers to offer clients a future-proofed, open platform, with price advantages."
On top of that, says Helme, this solution has many advantages over Ethernet. MADI switches are extremely price efficient, with low latency, low power consumption and fast set-up time - since they have been developed specifically for professional audio and video. These attributes are represented in Optocore's new range.
The new devices will eventually develop into a complete MADI series of 16-port and 8-port switches, offering 16 x RJ45 MADI ports and 8 x RJ45 MADI ports. The MADI switches are equipped with two redundant high-speed 2Gbit fibre uplinks, which can carry all 16 MADI streams.
The switches will function in MADI over the Cat 5 standard. This will be an addition to MADI over fibre and MADI over BNC, while the RJ45 used in the new products introduces a greater flexibility and simplifies the connection.
Each MADI port enables 64-in/64-out point-to-point connection, as well as 100Mbit Ethernet - and on the same single Cat5 cable there are 128 audio channels and 100Mbit Ethernet. At the same time, the MADI switch enables routing of each individual channel, providing a 512 x 512 matrix for the 8-port switch and 1024 x 1024 for the 16-port. It can also matrix through the uplinks with a number of additional switches, providing not only audio switching and routing, but also functioning as an Ethernet switch.
All new MADI switches are fully compatible with Optocore and SANE - and offer data connectivity to the same level as Optocore FX devices.
Tine Helmle says: "As an open platform, by introducing the MADI switches, Optocore is offering the customer a greater number of options with the best technical features, at the same time providing the lowest cost of ownership."
(Jim Evans)
