The AVN-PM8D is a powerful audio mix engine and AES67 interface with built-in mixer matrix, assignable DSP functions, GPIO, audio playback, web-enabled control and configuration, and twin TFT meter displays. 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.

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-PM8D 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-PM8D has the standard OLED front panel display, and the additional twin TFT meter displays. The OLED display provides detailed status information on device name, network addresses, PTP clocking info, power status/voltages, and version information. The TFT screens provide live display physical input and output levels. A rotary navigation control can be used to select a single input or output and view its metering data in a more detailed horizontal view.

The metering scale used is user configurable to one of nine different metering scales, with relevant ballistics. The metering scales available are: Dual PPM + Standard VU, EBU PPM, BBC PPM, Nordic PPM, AES Digital PPM, DIN PPM, German PPM, SMPTE RP.0155, Standard VU & Extended VU. Metering can be set to be either ‘Discrete’ or ‘Continuous’, which changes the appearance of the meter bar. Phase metering can be displayed per stereo channel, and channel idents can be shown either above or below the metering to identify each input/output.

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-PM8D uses eight mic/line XLR sockets for the inputs and eight RJ45 connectors using StudioHub® pinout for the stereo analogue line outputs. +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.

8-Way Digital Headphone Distribution System

The AVN-PM8D StudioHub® outputs can be combined with multiple AVN-HA1 headphone amplifiers to provide a headphone distribution system. Output connections can supply analogue power to the satellite headphone amplifiers. Each headphone amplifier can be sent a separate feed, mixed from any physical or stream inputs. The switches on the front panel of the AVN-HA1 can be used as another GPI for muting the output.

The AVN-PM8D 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.