Neve 4081 Digital I/O Option: 4 ch A/D D/A to AES or FireWire

Neve 4081 Digital I/O Option: 4 ch A/D D/A to AES or FireWire

The Neve 4081 Digital I/O Option provides a FireWire/AES interface with four channels of A/D conversion to either AES or FireWire. An insert point is available before the A/D converter on each channel to allow external, analogue Outboard equipment to be switched into the signal path. Four channels of AES-to-analogue or FireWire-to-analogue conversion are also available.

The expansion board is fitted internally to a 4081 unit and has two modes of operation, determined by whether a FireWire connection is detected or not.

Mode 1 - Standalone (no FireWire detected):

The 4 analogue outputs from the 4081 Mic Pre or Insert are mapped to the two stereo AES OUTPUTS. The two stereo AES INPUTS are mapped to the 4 analogue outputs – these are simply an AES to analogue convertor. The 4 analogue outputs are also available on the 25 way d-type on the back of the main 4081 unit.

If no sync input is detected (either Wordclock or AES), then the expansion board runs on internal sync and the sample rate is selected by the UP/DOWN buttons on the front panel.If a valid sync input is detected, then the sample rate is automatically calculated and indicated on the front panel.

External AES EBU cable lengths are limited to 100M.

Mode 2 – FireWire detected:

Multiple 4081 units can be cascaded onto one FireWire stream, or starred back to the FireWire card. There is currently a limit in the driver of 4 units per FireWire stream. 4 units gives 16 IN and 16 OUT on a single DAW connection if using FireWire, but the available bandwidth allows 16 IN and 16 OUT at 192kHz.

The first unit in the chain becomes the master, and provides the sync to the other 4081 units either via FireWire or Wordclock. Supports ASIO driver – the sample rate is set via the DAW software driver.