Specifications

RAVE Application Guide

Unless you’re working with a very small sound system, at some point you’ll probably have to deal with routing

audio signals, that is, getting audio from someplace to someplace else in real time, typically via wires. There

are several ways to do this, and the cost, reliability, performance, and ease of use will be greatly affected by

the method you use.

The latest (and we think, greatest) way to route audio is digitally, over a 100 megabit-per-second network, using

RAVE digital audio routers from QSC Audio. This applications guide will help you decide where and when to use

a RAVE network, and how to design it.

Routing: Getting audio from here to there and there,

and there to over there …

There are a number ways of getting multiple audio signals from one place to another. The simplest way from

Point A to Point B is by direct wire, as long as the distance is reasonable and there’s no need to quickly change

the routing. Examples of this include a multi-channel snake, or perhaps a small group of audio channels sent

via individual cables through a wall from one room to an adjacent room.

The solution gets more complex as you add more sources, destinations, or both, particularly if you need to keep

a high degree of flexibility in the configuration. In fact, a system using the direct wire method can grow

geometrically as the number of sources, destinations, or channels increase.

ONE PROBLEM, THREE SOLUTIONS

To illustrate this phenomenon of increasing complexity, let’s look

at a theoretical but admittedly far-fetched job (hey, those “a train

bound for Philadelphia leaves New York traveling 70 miles per

hour” math problems in school had only a loose connection to

reality, too, but they taught you the concept): let’s say you had

a site with eight audio facilities—production studios, equipment

rooms, control rooms, whatever—and each one had to be able

to send and receive eight channels of audio to and from any of

the other facilities.

Point-to-point

This diagram shows the basket-like complexity of a point-to-

point direct-wire solution to the problem. There are 16 shielded

pairs of audio cables between every possible pair of rooms, and

there are 28 possible combinations of rooms—a total of 448

individual cables. Imagine the labor involved to pull that many

8 pairs send +

8 pairs return

8 pairs send +

8 pairs return, × 28

STUDIO

When routing many channels among many sources and destina-

tions, direct point-to-point wiring is needlessly complex and costly.