Merging Technologies has announced the launch of its high-end digital to analogue converter, NADAC, which the company claims is the world’s first Network Attached digital-to-analogue converter. The NADAC is derived from the Horus and Hapi family of RAVENNA-enabled networked audio interfaces and is available in stereo or eight-channel.
Merging Technologies’ Chris Hollebone commented: “The modern world has become increasingly dependent on networks, both at home and in our professional environments. As network capacities have increased, more and more people are turning to IT networks for carrying both audio and video. Gigabit Ethernet clearly had sufficient capacity for high quality audio, but still was far from ideal without an additional protocol to add the required precision and management. We looked at alternatives that could offer sufficient accuracy and reliability with high channel counts and Hi-Res Audio data-rates. The only choice that made sense to us was RAVENNA.”
The added benefit of using an advanced networking solution such as RAVENNA is being able to send and receive control information as well as audio data. This has already opened up possibilities in the studio now available from the home.
Hollebone explained: “Because Merging developed standard drivers for RAVENNA for any computer operating system, you can connect your NADAC to any music server, player or streamer supporting ASIO on Windows, CoreAudio/DoP on MacOSX. All you need is a Cat5e or Cat6 cable. In short, any connected device in the home can be routed to NADAC, and multiple NADACs can listen to any device, zone or playlist. A built-in web browser means that you can control NADAC remotely from any mobile device, giving you handy control of listening level and source selection. You can even control multiple NADACs remotely from the same mobile device.”
Andreas Hildebrand, senior product manager at ALC NetworX, the company behind the RAVENNA technology, said: “While originally targeted at the most demanding applications in the professional broadcast environment, we also designed RAVENNA with utmost flexibility in mind. With RAVENNA now being able to support even the most precise formats in the commercial audio market, we see this as a proof of concept for our open, standards-based solution approach.
“Finally, audiophiles can look forward to hearing the same quality in their own home and home cinemas as the engineers and musicians heard at the recording session. The combination of our expertise in converter technology and analogue circuitry matched with the power and accuracy of RAVENNA audio transport is simply an unbeatable combination. We’re proud to offer sound quality of this level to a new market in the form of NADAC.”
