UB MADI : Overview
USB is everywhere. In fact, it’s impossible to find a modern computer without USB 2.0, which is the only connection UB MADI needs to get a MADI stream in and out of your PC or Mac.
UB MADI is fully hot-pluggable. Audio flows within 4 seconds of the device being plugged in and you don’t need to restart, even if the connection is lost during a recording or playback. UB MADI is bus-powered. Only the USB cable is required to power UB MADI, even if you’re driving signals over 100m of cable.
UB MADI is small, light and robust. Using a strong USB-B type socket and standard cabling, UB MADI is reliable and portable and takes up minimal space – perfect for a high performance location recording or virtual sound check system.
48 channels. Our aim with UB MADI is to deliver a great channel count without sacrificing latency, quality or reliability. The ground breaking performance of the SD7-derived FPGA and on-board 500MHz dualcore CPU and the specification of USB 2.0 means the sweet spot for an audio interface is 48 channels of IO simultaneously (full-duplex at 48KHz only).
Future upgrades. Because of the huge amount of extra processing power already on-board, as with all DiGiCo products, upgrades to features and capabilities are possible.
Low Latency. The multi-device, switching nature of USB does mean that it is more difficult for manufacturers to achieve low latency performance, but with UB MADI’s highly tuned USB processor and driver, DiGiCo has achieved industry-leading low latencies over USB 2.0.
Stability. As UB MADI is fully digital end-to-end and isn’t reliant on USB’s data clock for timing, jitter is not an issue. All audio data is recovered and input clock tolerance massively exceeds the AES minimum specification.
Computer compatibility. UB MADI is compatible with virtually all Windows or Macintosh® computers with an Intel® Core™ Duo or better CPU. Recording and/or playing back 48 channels of 24 bit audio requires a hard disk or solid state drive with reasonable performance and minimal fragmentation. DiGiCo provides a high performance, ultra-low-latency driver for both Windows and Macintosh.
Supported audio and clock formats. UB MADI can receive the first 48 channels of any AES10-compliant MADI stream, as well as coaxial AES3 (AES/EBU) stereo audio.
With no input connected, UB MADI will clock the MADI output to its own highly stable internal clock. However, if a valid MADI, AES3 or Word Clock are detected on the input, this will be used as the system clock.
