Specifications

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cables and connect them to patch bays in each location. Imagine

the likelihood of wiring errors and ground loops, and the suscep-

tibility to EMI. On top of that, each room would require eight

distribution amps. Hopefully, you’ll never need to move or re-

arrange anything. It’s an unnecessarily complicated, difficult,

and expensive way to go.

Crosspoint routing

Another solution is the crosspoint router. It takes the eight

channels of audio from each room to a central switching box and

distributes them to whichever other rooms request the audio.

The wiring complexity is much more manageable than with the

direct-wire technique, but there are still 128 shielded pairs to

connect, plus eight sets of control lines. And there is still the risk

of ground loops and EMI.

64 × 64

Crosspoint Router

8 pairs send × 8

8 pairs return × 8

Router control lines × 8

STUDIO

Crosspoint routing is a better solution than point-

to-point, but it still has its drawbacks

8-port 100baseTX hub

100baseTX

CAT5 UTP cable × 8

One RAVE 188

in each studio

STUDIO

Digital routing, using RAVE

The third solution is using RAVE digital audio routers, which use

a 100baseTX Fast Ethernet medium to transport as many as 64

channels of audio over singular CAT5 unshielded twisted pair

(UTP) network cable. Unlike the direct-wire approach, wiring

needs in a RAVE system vary more or less directly with the

number of locations you’re routing audio to and from. In the

system shown here, there are eight rooms, so there are eight

wires, each connected to a RAVE 188, which sends eight

channels and receives eight channels. Add a room? Add a wire

and a RAVE unit. Run out of ports on the hub? Add another hub.

Very simple.

Unlike the crosspoint router, the RAVE system is not centralized.

All audio channels are available anywhere anytime on the RAVE

network. The hub merely distributes the audio data among all the

RAVE units.

An additional benefit is that the RAVE network distributes audio

in the digital domain (48 kHz sample rate, 20 bits uncompressed)

and is thus

free from ground loops,

and it enjoys a high immunity

to noise and EMI. Certain RAVE models have AES3-format (AES/

EBU) digital audio inputs and/or outputs, so you can route audio

freely among analog and digital devices without interim conver-

sion.

A RAVE digital audio routing network uses a central hub and

reduces wiring requirements down to just a single network cable

to each location.