German broadcast audio specialist DirectOut Technologies has announced a new hardware version of its ExBox.BLDS automatic redundancy switch. A result of requests from FOH engineers all over the world, the hardware will ship with a modular Madi interface in order to cover all applications and formats in multichannel Madi systems.

‘ExBox.BLDS has long been a special product for DirectOut, since it is one of our typical problem-solving solutions,’ says CTO Stephan Flock. ‘Very many live systems and broadcast environments worldwide rely on our fail-over hardware to ensure proper signal transmission in redundant recording setups or playout rigs.’

However, one of the limitations of the ExBox.BLDS hardware has been the fixed design of its Madi I/O, which means that it was unable to provide all BNC or SFP configurations.

‘While BNC Madi is still very popular – especially in live systems where DiGiCo and Avid consoles are predominant – the flexible SFP format is the preferred option for broadcasters,’ Flock continues. ‘As a result of this, we decided to eliminate this last little deficit by designing a hardware with modular Madi.IOs – for everybody using Madi.’

The new hardware design of ExBox.BLDS is based on the Madi modules used in DirectOut’s SG.Madi SoundGrid interface. In this way, users are not only able to receive any configuration of the two Madi ports as required but are also able to change this configuration in the future.

More: www.directout.eu