So welcome to AES Dublin how we doing..
We're gonna talk to Will Hoult of Focusrite,
about the latest products and software.
So Will, we're going to see your stuff here
at the AES, how have you been enjoying the
show so far.
It's been a really good day
so far, today's the first day of the show.
I gave a presentation earlier today It
was called Dante unmasked, so I went over
some of the key, key aspects about Dante.
Some key do's some key don'ts.
And you're talking about Dante in human terms in
real language for humans to understand.
What does it mean?
I start off on, start off with a very simple
layer and then start getting deeper and
more technical as the presentation goes
on, so yeah it's so...
It's a pretty good, pretty good topic for
me to be talking about.
Great and what is in real terms Dante ...
what does that mean
to the normal person?
Good question so Dante is an audio over
IP implementation.
It means that I can take a device that's
got the Dante label written on it from
any one of over 400 different
manufacturers now put it onto a standard
network and make audio pass from one
device to another....
amazing so audio over IP is the big thing
here this year, in
the very simplest terms could you give
an explanation to our audience?
Absolutely, so, so essentially audio over
IP allows us to take a standard network
like we use with our computers every day,
and send audio back and forth across it
in an uncompressed format, from one to
many devices using the same cabling that
we're already familiar with,
so it's very low cost way of transmitting audio
within a facility or within a site.
It uses uncompressed audio formats
which means we're still getting the same
quality out the other end that we put in
at the front end, and really it's just a
much more easy to use much more flexible
system than any other point-to-point
system that you could imagine, either an
analog multi-core or say Madi or a S3
point-to-point system.
And you were saying about software as well...
Yeah so we use RedNet control as our
software to tie together the system so
RedNet Control gives you one place to
go to, to provide control of all of the
different interfaces that are on your
network within the Red or the RedNet
range...
Awesome and plugins still got the
Red plugins there?
Yes at Focusrite we've got the focus right
Red plug-in suite, you get a license for
those free of charge with any one of the
Red or RedNet interface as you see here,
so yes a really nice EQ and compressor plug-in
that will run with your DAW, it's worth
mentioning as well the devices which we
don't have here today, so a lot of you
Focusrite fans will be really familiar
with the Scarlet range of USB Audio
Interfaces... so they're not on our booth,
it's a relatively small booth, and our
focus today is Audio over IP but
they're obviously a really important
part of our of our company..
of our product lineup,
it's also the current range of of USB
interfaces which we're also very proud of too...
so you can check those out on
Focusrite.com if you want
to have a look at some of these
interfaces here the Red and the RedNet
range there over at Pro.focusrite.com.
So Will, could you tell us about some of
your products here? Yeah..
so this is the RedNet Range that we've got
in this rack here, so we've got RedNet
MP8R here at the top here.
That's our 8 channel remote control mic Pre..
so this device is fully remote controllable
across the network from RedNet Control
software, it's also controllable from
some of the Yamaha consoles like the CL,
the QL range, from those guys.
Each channel has got an impedance
switch so it's set for 10k by default, but you can
drop it down to 2.4 K if you
want, there's a 20 DB pad on each channel,
we've obviously got level control on the front
panel for that too.
Phantom as you'd expect...
high-pass filter on there as well,
phase invert and one of the really cool
things about RedNet MP8R is that
each channel has a gain compensated
output as well. So if I want to use one
mic Pre to feed two different sources
and there are two different operators, I
don't want there to be a scenario where
I tweak the analog gain, and the other
engineer wasn't expecting that change, so
we have the gain compensation on a
second set of Dante transmitters there.
Which means that as I make changes in
the analog domain, they're gonna be
counteracted in the digital, and means
that the signal level is going to remain
unchanged on the secondary set of
outputs... a really nifty feature.
it's going to give us some analog i/o so
we've got our RedNet A8R and the RedNet
A16R, each of those have got eight
and sixteen channels of analog line IO,
as well as a pair of AES three on there.
We've then got our a AES3 interface,
which gives you eight pairs in and eight
pairs out from the network to the network.
D64R which is a really popular
one particularly in OB trucks, being able
to provide Madi connectivity to the
network, so it's going to give us 64
channels in and out over Coax or over
Optical with sample rate conversion on
all of the inputs and the outputs..
so really nice box, really flexible to be
able to integrate with a lot of
different systems, and then finally at
the bottom here we've got RedNet HD32R,
that gives us 32 channels in and out
of a Pro Tools HD system over the
digi Link cable...
so yeah a fairly comprehensive range of
devices that gives us a lot of connectivity options.
Now will this Red range looks beautiful,
could you tell us what these are all about?
Absolutely so we have the red 4
Pre at the top here, the Red 8 Pre, the red
16 Line...
so this range of devices they
offer Thunderbolt connectivity to core
audio applications within the the Mac
environment, they also offer Pro Tools HD
connectivity on the digi link port.
All of them include 32 channels in and 32
channels out on the Dante audio over IP network.
Each of them has 16 channels of
ADAT in and out, 2 channels of S/PDIF in
and out, and then the main thing that
differentiates each device from each
other, is the number of analog inputs and
outputs, so the Red 4 Pre, has 8 analog
in and a total of 10 analog out.
Four of those inputs are Mic Pre's..
so we've got four really high-quality
remote control Mic Pre's on there.
On the 8 Pre, we have sixteen channels in
and eighteen channels out analog,
eight of those are Mic Pre's on the input
side, and again fully remote controllable
as you'd expect, then finally on the
sixteen line side, and that provides
sixteen in an 18 out analog, and great
for connecting to outboard gear, or maybe
a console, and there are two Mic Pre's
as the input capability on that one.
So yeah, a fairly comprehensive range of
devices that all integrate with, with the
network side of things as well as Pro
Tools HD or with, with the core audio
system, and what's really new at this
show for these devices is that the
RedNet control software is now
controlling these three
devices over the thunderbolt port.
So previously we had a separate
application to the rest of the RedNet
range, that's now all being done within the
same application, making it easier than ever
to integrate your Red interface with
the wider RedNet network.
We've brought a number of other features
along as well, so we now offer midi
control of the microphone preamplifiers
in the red range...
which is you know a really great thing to
be able to do, as well as having views
within the software which provide
metering of all inputs and outputs
simultaneously. So it's quite an
important update for us,
something we've been really, really,
pleased to finally get out to to all of our
customers and to any future customers
of the Red range,
And Will you were saying about control
coming out with thunderbolt
that's only Macintosh... or you're
including the PC there of course.
So that's a really good question..
so currently on the Red range of devices
they're only supported for the Mac
operating system, however we are working
on a Windows driver, and that's something
that we would we'd really like to
release soon.
So keep an eye on Pro.focusrite.com
for the latest updates on that situation.
Okay brilliant,
These two at the top.. what's the story with those..
So here we have RedNet AM2 on the left-hand
side and RedNet X2P on the right hand
side, so RedNet AM2, this is a stereo
receiver for our network.
So it's based on Dante again, this box
gives us two channels of output, we can
send those to a line output on a pair of
XLR's on the back with their own level
control and their own mute switch.
There's also a headphone amplifier on
there, which gets very loud if you want it
too... plug that in on the quarter inch
output on the front,
and you've also got a level control
specifically for that there.
It's power over ethernet supplied which means that
I can plug it in with one cable to
deliver the audio, the clocking, and the
power to the device.
It's also got a mic stand around in the
bottom, so if I want
to put it on the stand,
keep it off to the side,
it's a really nice option to be
able to do so..
then RedNet X2P is it's bigger brother
essentially..... RedNet X2P is a 2 in 2 out
audio interface for the Dante network.
It's got 2 microphone preamplifiers, the
same Mic freeze that you'll find in our red and red net range of devices it
also has the option for those being used for line input or to connect save an
instrument input from a guitar for example they're controlled from the
front panel and also remotely we then have two outputs on the device as well
again line outputs or a headphone output there's an LCD screen on the panel which
allows you to see the settings for for the mic freeze as well as for the
outputs gives you metering on there too and as I mentioned it's fully remote
controllable which means that I can deploy it on the studio floor I still
have control of that over the network but if I want to make changes on the
device itself I can do so from there another thing worth talking about is
there is a very basic mixer on the device so I can mix between the local
inputs coming in on analog and the inputs coming in from the network which
means if I want a bit more me in my microphone from my microphone going to
my headphones I can just make a little tweak there and get a little a little
bit of that in there power over ethernet supplies and again mounts on a mic stand
if I want it to so very flexible device very powerful device and if people want
to know any more about this where do they go they go to pro don't focus right
calm