Audinate has announced the new Ultimo (ULT-01-004) chip, which supports 4×4 channels of uncompressed audio; this is double the capacity of the Ultimo ULT-01-002, introduced at the start of 2013.
Ultimo is a low-cost family of complete single-chip Dante solutions for networked audio products. It incorporates all the differentiated Dante features including automatic device discovery, plug-and-play networking, customisation of device names and channel labels and network-based firmware updates. The Ultimo family is suitable for networking powered speakers, microphones, AV wallplates, speakerphones, amplifiers, paging stations, personal monitoring systems, recording interfaces, intercoms, and analog/digital break-in/break out interfaces. Because of the increased channel count, ULT-01-004 extends the range of applications in which Ultimo can be used.
Coinciding with the launch of the new 4×4 chip, the complete Ultimo product family feature set is to be enhanced to include the following features:
• Increased range of sample rates (44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz)
• Pull-up/pull-down support
• Remote signal presence indication
• Latency monitoring
• Improved clock statistics reporting
• GPIO pin activation
“The new Ultimo chip option, together with the enhanced set of features, opens up a new range of products for our OEMs who wish to have cost effective networked audio-over-IP products using Dante”, said Gary Southwell, Audinate’s vice president of product management. “It provides our customers a system on a chip that simplifies design of a whole new category of products. Dante is recognised by our OEMs to be the easiest feature-rich networking technology to implement, and by their customers as the easiest networking solution to deploy.”
Several OEMs are already developing products based on the new Ultimo features and options, which will be generally available in Q1 2014.
