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Packing superior DAD sound quality into a compact package, the NTP-DAD AX Center is a modular Thunderbolt 3 audio interface sporting 256 near-zero latency Thunderbolt, 256 Dante, and 64 MADI input channels. Sporting two…
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Packing superior DAD sound quality into a compact package, the NTP-DAD AX Center is a modular Thunderbolt 3 audio interface sporting 256 near-zero latency Thunderbolt, 256 Dante, and 64 MADI input channels. Sporting two XLR-1/4" combo mic / line / Hi-Z inputs, outputs for two stereo monitor pairs, and two modular I/O slots for expansion, the AX Center is ideal for studios or touring rigs.
The AX Center provides a maximum sampling rate of 32-bit float / 384 kHz and offers versatile connectivity including: two Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C ports, two RJ45 Dante ports, 16 channels of ADAT I/O via optical TOSLINK, MADI coaxial I/O, RJ45 network control ports for DADman control, and BNC wordclock I/O. The analog connectivity is supplemented by two front-panel 1/4" headphone outputs. The two optional I/O module slots allow you to connect any combination of eight available I/O cards for a range of analog, digital, and SDI video configurations. The integrated PRO | MON monitor controller provides comprehensive monitoring configuration (from mono to 64-channel Atmos) with summing and folddown functionality. You can also enjoy SPQ speaker processing on 128 channels with a total of 1024 EQ bands and individual channel delay.
You have the following I/O expansion cards to choose from when you consider what to add to the two expansion slots of your AX Center:
AX Center comes with the world-renowned PRO|MON monitor controller that is being used in thousands of music studios and postproduction facilities worldwide, which provides ultimate flexibility for any speaker configuration from mono to full 64-channel Dolby Atmos, with speaker processing, delay, and configurable monitor groups. PRO|MON can be controlled remotely and hands-on from the MOM hardware monitor controller, as well as Eucon-enabled control surfaces such as Avid’s Dock, S1, S4, S6, and even the free Avid Control app.
The SPQ feature can be configured to various different filter characteristics and channel layouts via the DADman control software and is all integrated and easily managed by the PRO|MON monitor control section in DADman. SPQ supports all the system sample rates and will reconfigure automatically and fast when sample rates are changed, with equal filters and delay independent of the sample rate. Delay can be set individually per channel as well as generally for a whole set of speakers to also accommodate lip-sync applications.
Included on the rear panel are a host of connectivity options—Thunderbolt, Dante AoIP, MADI, ADAT, S/PDIF, and Word Clock. In total, and fully expanded, you can max out AX Center with a staggering 984 input and output channels. The Core Audio driver supports both Apple Silicon and Intel hardware platforms so you get a futureproof solution.
And if you prefer to work on Windows, AX Center also comes with an ASIO driver. Since the Core Audio driver for macOS can be shared across several different software applications, your AX Center could be shared between Logic Pro, Ableton, Cubase and/or Nuendo simultaneously. And with 256 Thunderbolt channels under the hood, there would be plenty of channels available for each application.
The Thunder|Core Audio interface is controlled via the DADman software. DADman can connect to the Thunder|Core interface either via Ethernet or via a communication channel in the Thunderbolt connection.
More units can be daisy-chained via the Thunderbolt ports, and each unit will appear in DADman control software. Using control over Ethernet, the two RJ45 connectors acts as a switch for connection to more units. The Dante / AES67 audio is also passed on the two RJ45 connectors.
The DAD Thunder|Core technology provides a Thunderbolt 3 connection with near-zero latency for interfacing between audio applications on macOS or Windows computers and the Thunder|Core audio hardware. The interface provides a fast Thunderbolt 3 / PCIe connection and data transfer with two samples of latency on the connection and a total of 9 samples in the digital interface as the total also includes EQ and summing processing within the unit.
The channel capacity is up to 256 audio channels at 48 and 96 kHz, and the latency at 96 kHz is 95 microseconds. The total round-trip latency with an audio software application will depend on the buffer size set for the application. With a buffer size of 32 samples, the latency is 670 microseconds at 96 kHz.
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