News

Sonifex to Launch Rack-Mount Monitors (27/2/2008)

On booth number N4919 Sonifex are launching a new range of products, a series of three rack-mount audio monitors, called the Reference Monitor range.

Managing Director Marcus Brooke commented: "The Reference Monitor range of products is an exciting new venture for us and we've been working really hard to produce some products which have exceptional sound quality and a comprehensive feature set as well as good looks in the rack. The addition of a 5 band parametric EQ to the units is a unique feature that allows you to alter the monitors response either to account for poor acoustics in the room that the monitor is mounted in, or to suit your particular listening tastes".

The three products in the range are available in April 2008:

RM-2S4 Reference Monitor 2 LED meter, 4 stereo channel audio inputs RM-2S10 Reference Monitor 2 LED meter, 10 stereo channel audio inputs RM-4C8 Reference Monitor 4 LED meter, 8 channel inputs, dual selectors

Each one is a 1U rack-mount unit offering quality loudspeaker monitoring and accurate, high-resolution metering of up to four or ten stereo audio sources (more with the addition of an optional expansion card). Sources may be in any mixture of analogue and AES/EBU digital formats, with sample rates up to 192kHz accepted and a 5 band parametric EQ can be used to tailor the unit for the room it is mounted in.

Sources are selected via a front panel rotary encoder, with clear LED indication of the current selection. A pair of line-level audio outputs, configurable as analogue or AES/EBU digital, follow the selected source at either a fixed level or one mirroring the loudspeaker volume.

The level of the chosen source is displayed on a pair of bright, multicoloured 53-segment bargraph meters, with a choice of seven accurately modelled scales/responses to suit different applications and local preferences. A separate phase meter indicates channel correlation or phase error conditions. On the rear panel, open-collector alarm outputs provide hardware indication of sustained underlevel, overlevel and phase errors.

Six illuminated pushbuttons provide access to a range of audio 'modifiers' - instant dimming of the volume, muting of each audio channel, stereo-to-mono conversion, phase inversion and Middle+Side transcoding. On the rear panel, logic-level inputs allow direct remote access to the DIM and MUTE functions.

The three-way loudspeaker system is fed via a DSP-based active crossover and a trio of highly efficient Class-D amplifiers. Careful attention to driver selection, materials and case design, plus active DSP equalisation, has ensured a flat response and outstanding reproduction from such a shallow unit. Each unit can be accessed remotely via both USB and RS232 connections.

An optional addition to each model are the HD video input expansion cards, allowing multiple AES groups embedded within an HD-SDI or SD-SDI signal to be de- embedded and monitored.

www.sonifex.co.uk  

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