At this year’s IBC show on stand 8.561, further to the 3 products released earlier in the year, Sonifex are showing some further additions to strengthen their Redbox range of audio interfaces.
Managing Director Marcus Brooke commented: "Although some of the new products aren’t going to be best-sellers, we get asked for them at exhibitions like IBC quite a lot, so we’ve developed them more to become the ‘one stop shop’ for audio interfaces. Our customers should have fewer reasons to look anywhere else for these kind of products."
A new version of the combined stereo RB-ADDA A/D and D/A converter has been launched which is 192kHz, 24 bit compatible. Imaginatively titled, the RB-ADDA2 has all of the features of the RB-ADDA unit plus an extended frequency range to 192kHz, an optical input and output, front panel push-button controls and separate AES/EBU and word-clock synchronising inputs, so that the A/D and D/A sections can be used separately.
Three new utility products have been announced - the RB-PA2 is a dual stereo phono RIAA gram amplifier for converting pick-up cartridge signals on a turntable to a line input level. It has adjustable output gain using pre-set potentiometers and the frequency response is held to within 0.5dB of the RIAA equalisation curve.
The RB-ML2 is a stereo microphone and line level limiter. It can operate in stereo, or dual mono mode, so can be used as a stereo line limiter, or dual mic limiter. The unit is mainly used where assistance with level control is required, for protection of mixer inputs and to prevent distortion. Ideal for news-booths, and the input to PC workstations, it provides an economical level control solution. Two mic/line inputs have independent gain, filtering and phantom power selection. The VCA limiter circuit can operate jointly on the signals (stereo mode) or independently (mono mode) and the characteristics of the limiter can be set via level threshold presets. The RB-ML2 also has either line or mic level outputs so that it can be used in line with a mic input on a mixer or similar equipment.
The RB-MM1 is a mix-minus generator. The RB-MM1 is a unit for generating a suitable mix-minus to send to a telephone hybrid or codec. A stereo output is taken from a mixer, together with a post fader output from the mono telephone fader on the mixer. The caller audio is removed from the mixer signal and this is what is sent to the telephone hybrid. The RB-MM1 has analogue inputs and outputs, output level control, 2 null cancellation control pots and a switch for a bandpass filter to condition the signal for the telephone hybrid..
As a slight diversion into the world of audio for video, the latest product is the RB-DS2 stereo audio delay synchroniser. The RB-DS2 is used for resynchronising audio to video following delay processes such as standards conversion & transmission delay. The RB-DS2 has both balanced analogue and AES/EBU digital audio inputs and outputs on 3 pin XLR connectors. It can act as a combined A/D and D/A unit meaning that analogue inputs can be delayed and output as AES/EBU and vice-versa. It is a stereo delay, but can also be used as a dual mono delay to process each audio path separately.
As standard the RB-DS2 can provide up to 10.5 seconds of delay at 96kHz sampling, 24 bit (42 secs at 48kHz, 16 bit). An internal Compact Flash™ expansion allows up to 2GB of memory to be accessed providing delay times of over 3.5 hours, for example, to delay a programme output across different time-zones, or to shift a broadcast programme by 1 hour for a satellite rebroadcast. Delay times can be selected in samples, fields, frames, milliseconds and, with the Compact Flash™ expansion, in hh:mm:ss. Frame and field definitions can be for PAL (25 frame) or NTSC (30 frame) signals.
The DHY-02, Sonifex’s DSP based digital hybrid, has been redesigned as the DHY-03. With a lower price and outstanding performance, the DHY-03 offers a greater feature-set including universal line compatibility, input and output gain adjustment, input and output metering, conferencing, RS232 serial control, local/remote line hold switching, integrated auto-answer, a balanced mic/line input and balanced line output.
Also on display are talkback intercom units premiered at last year’s show and the S2 small format, modular digital I/O analogue radio broadcast mixer which is set into a complete S2 Solutions radio studio package. New for the S2 mixer is the S2-ML53 LED meter panel which fits in the meterbridge section of the mixer. The LED meter consists of 53 LEDs showing both PPM and VU scales. The S2-MPH is a phase-meter which operates on the selected source to the meters. 5 LED indicators show the phase angle in 45 degree steps from 0 (in-phase) to 180 (out of phase).
Finally, the D:Scribe Standalone transcription system has been updated to take some video file formats as well as audio formats for transcription.
