This year on stand 8.E61 at IBC, Sonifex will be showing a number of new products which use AES67 AoIP to enable mixing and monitoring of AoIP streams as well as having physical inputs and outputs.

The AVN Portal range of mix engines consist of three main units with options for front and rear panels. The Portals’ versatility allows them to be used for any applications where mixing of signals is required, e.g. an 8 channel cleanfeed generator, to send 64 streams of IFB to connected belt-packs, or as an 8 output zone mixer. They can be combined with the Sonifex AVN-HA1/AVN-HD1 headphone amplifiers to create a headphone distribution system, with dynamic, remotely controllable input mixes.

The AVN-PA8 Portal has 8 x stereo analogue line inputs & outputs on D-type sockets with AES59 analogue pinout, paralleled with 8 x RJ45 connectors using StudioHub® pinout. Up to 16 x AES67 input channels and 64 x AES67 output channels can be created in each Portal, supporting the full range of AES67 packet times and channel counts. The key to the success of the units is the mix matrix where physical inputs can be freely mixed and routed with AES67 streams in a simple and intuitive way to both physical outputs and AES67 streams, whilst also adding DSP functions (e.g. gain) at inputs, outputs and cross-points. The units can stream RAVENNA, AES67 or AES67-enabled Dante® (using SAP) AoIP connected streams.

The AVN-PD8 Portal has 8 x stereo AES3 digital line inputs & outputs. It has individual input sample rate conversion, input and output gain adjustment and has the same streaming facilities as the AVN-PA8.

Finally, there is the AVN-PM8 Portal which has 8 x mic/line inputs and 8 x stereo line outputs. +48V phantom power is available for each microphone input with a red LED presence indication. There is adjustable input and output gain/trim and the AVN-PM8 has an additional mic pre-amp gain adjustment for each mic input.

Each of the portals can be supplied with different front and rear panels: As standard they have a front panel display to show product information and for editing basic IP functionality and they use XLRs and D-types for rear panel connectivity.

The ‘D’ version portals (e.g. AVN-PA8D) have front panel input and output metering on 2 bright TFT displays. Metering can show as one of 9 different metering scales and there is a summary view of all input channels with a detailed view of any selected stereo pair. Phase metering is also displayed per stereo channel.

The ‘T’ version portals (e.g. AVN-PM8T) use rear panel terminal block connectors for all physical inputs and outputs.

For all products, the rear panel contains IEC mains and secondary DC power inputs which provide power redundancy to the product. There are two Ethernet RJ45 connections (control and AoIP) and there is an Ethernet SFP module that, when used, replaces the AoIP RJ45 connection.

For remote operation and monitoring, the units can be controlled using Ember+ commands. A rear panel GPIO connector provides 10 local ports which can be user configured as inputs or outputs and provide software controlled functionality. A voltage free relay contact can be used to operate external equipment.

There are virtual GPIO ports which can be used to trigger events over the network and SNMP is also supported. A built-in responsive web server provides complete configuration & control of the unit including matrix mixing and routing, and also allows for firmware updates and configuration backup.