Sonifex has announced a new Dante-based headphone amplifier, the AVN-AH8 a 1U-high rackmount which distributes two sets of stereo audio to up to eight different sets of headphones, fed from the Dante AoIP network.
‘This is the first new product that we’ve released for a year or two,’ says Sonifex Managing Director, Marcus Brooke. ‘Continuing our use of Dante, it’s a multi-output headphone amplifier with front panel controls and the choice of two inputs, for each output. Unique in design, it offers a simple solution for talks areas and theatres/venues where headphone monitoring is required. The design is partially a result of us getting on top of the procurement issues happening throughout the industry – we’ve been able to allocate more time to designing new products, as well as revisiting the design of existing ones.’
A typical application might be to provide common headphone feeds for guests in a radio studio, coming directly from the AoIP network.
Each output on the AVN-AH8 has front panel unbalanced quarter-inch and 3.5mm jack sockets and a rotary level control. The front panel potentiometers adjust the headphone levels from mute (fully anticlockwise) to 0dB of gain when fully clockwise. This is useful if the Dante stream level is low or high and requires adjusting.
There are eight parallel quarter-inch jacks on the rear panel, for ease of wiring if the unit is installed in an enclosed rack. Each of the eight professional headphone outputs can each select between two stereo Dante sources, which are routed via Dante controller. The level of each stereo Dante stream can be adjusted ±12dB using one of the two front panel rotary controls. The unit supports AES67 operation and is Dante Domain Manager compliant.
The AVN-AH8 front panel contains a power (PoE) LED, a DC LED, a network link status LED, and a clock LED. A recessed reset switch is also provided. The unit is powered via Power over Ethernet (PoE) or a 12V DC input via a locking 2.5mm DC input, 2A minimum rating.
The AVN-AH8 will be available in June 2023.
More: www.sonifex.co.uk
