The AVN-PM8T is a powerful audio mix engine and AES67 interface with built-in mixer matrix, assignable DSP functions, GPIO, audio playback, and web-enabled control and configuration. It features eight mic/line inputs with switchable phantom power, eight stereo analogue line outputs, plus a dedicated AES67 Audio over IP (AoIP) portal, available via RJ45 Ethernet connection or an SFP (small form-factor pluggable) port. Recent firmware additions include tone generation, audio file playback, DTMF generation/recognition, and optional Opus codec encoding & decoding. Physical digital audio inputs and outputs, and GPIO provided on terminal block connectors. At the heart of this unit is a powerful mix engine with web-enabled configuration and control. Any physical audio input and AES67 stream input can be mixed or routed to any physical audio output or AES67 stream output, with gain adjustment at the input, the mix point or the output. DSP functions, such as gain and filtering, can be added at inputs, outputs and cross-points. Up to 16 x AES67 input channels and 64 x AES67 output channels can be created, supporting the full range of AES67 packet times and channel counts. It can send or receive RAVENNA and AES67 AoIP streams, or AES67-enabled Dante® flows (discovered using SAP). Input and output AES67 streams can be individually added/modified and the SDP of each stream can be checked and edited. The unit can act as a PTP master clock or slave clock and supports IEEE1588-2008 PTPv2 media and default profiles. With this flexibility, the AVN-PM8T becomes an advanced problem-solving box for any applications where monitoring of inputs and outputs and mixing of signals is required. With native AES67 support, multiple stream outputs can be provided, combined with remote handling via GPIO, VGPIO, SNMP and Ember+ support.

Front Panel Displays, Metering & Controls

The AVN-PM8T unit is supplied with the standard OLED front panel display, which provides detailed status information on device name, network addresses, PTP clocking info, power status/voltages, version information, and basic metering (The ‘D’ version adds twin TFT metering with configurable ballistics). The display and navigation controls allow editing of certain functions, limited to networking (IP addresses, friendly name, etc) and display (brightness and contrast). The front panel controls also include user configurable buttons which can be set-up to perform actions such as activating a GPIO or as a shortcut button to jump to a specified menu on the OLED display. Front panel LEDs show the AoIP network status, synchronisation status and the status of the AC and DC power supply inputs. The brightness of the OLED display and LED indicators can be continuously adjusted for low or high lighting conditions. A front panel power button is available to turn the unit on and off. The power button is disabled by default but can be enabled through the ‘Display Settings’ web page.

Physical Inputs & Outputs

For physical audio connections, the AVN-PM8T uses terminal block connections for the eight mic/line XLR inputs, the eight stereo analogue line outputs, and the GPIO. +48V phantom power is available for each microphone input with a red LED presence indication. There are two Ethernet RJ45 connections – one for control and one for the AoIP network. There is also an Ethernet SFP module that, when used, replaces the AoIP RJ45 connection, e.g. for a 1Gbit/s copper or optical SFP transceiver. When an SFP is used, this replaces the AoIP RJ45 connection. A rear panel GPIO connector provides 10 local ports which can be user configured as inputs or outputs and provide software-controlled functionality. A voltage free relay contact can be used to operate external equipment. There are virtual GPIO ports which can be used to trigger events over the network between devices. For remote operation and monitoring, SNMP V2 is supported and the units can be controlled using Ember+ commands. The AVN-PM8T is part of the Sonifex AVN-Portal series, which includes the AVN-PA8 (analogue physical I/O), the AVN-PD8 (digital physical I/O), and the AVN-PM8 (mic inputs, line outputs). Each of those has three additional variants indicated by letter suffixes: The AVN-PA8D features two bright TFT meter displays which provide a live display of the levels of the physical inputs and outputs respectively; the AVN-PA8T features rear panel terminal block connectors for all physical inputs and outputs; the AVN-PA8TD features both the TFT displays and terminal block connections.