Next to my Virus TI, I am the proud owner of a Metric Halo MIO 2882 AD/DA sound interface that's over 10 years old, and, in the near future, for a second time since I bought it, I will be able to buy and install a hardware upgrade component that turns this hardware interface and its powerful software suite in an up-to-date, extremely powerful tool that's fully compatible with today's connecting technologies and, in such, stays ahead of most of its competitors in terms of power and connectivity.
It's a unique feature example, and I do not know of any tech company, other the Metric Halo that has been able to upgrade hardware in such a spectacular way.
Now, I appreciate my Virus TI very much, and I believe we have been very lucky with the numerous software upgrades that Acces have been providing for free, but last night, after seeing the youtube feature on Metric Halo's new 3D hardware upgrade, I dreamt away that something of this nature would happen to the Virus TI... a Xmas carol for sure... or not?
Access, can you go talk to these MH guys, please?
This youtube clip gives all the explanation (in German though, but all the better for Access):
But thanks to the translation by Andrew Hall, there's this listing of its new specs in..." the Queen's Language":
0:26 - The new 3D card in blue.
0:57 - The new DSP module.
1:12 - Current DSP for 2D card uses only 384 KBy RAM.
1:25 - *3D's DSP sports 32 MBy on-DSP chip RAM, 1 GBy RAM, 4 GBy SSD.*
1:36 - Plus *the new FPGA DSP chip has 3.5x the compute capacity* of
the previous 2D's TigerSHARC chip.
FPGA - Field-Programmable Gate Array
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array
2:00 - The 3D card sports a new *clock with 12x less jitter* than
previously,
and new power management.
2:35 - A *new MADI I/O card* sports 64 optical and 64 copper ins and outs.
MADI - Multichannel Audio Digital Interface (a.k.a. AES10)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MADI
2:55 - More, different, rear-panel I/O cards are in the works.
3:10 - Also a *new USB-C connector.*
3:20 - Plus
*2 MH-Link Gigabit Ethernet LAN connectors for 128 channels at 192
kHz plus clock signal over up to 100 meters (330 ft) over CAT-5
cable with full ground isolation.*
4:08 - Amazingly,
*the other end of the MH-Link cable can be plugged into the
computer's LAN Networking port, for 128 channels at 192 kHz.*
4:23 -
*With MH-Link there are no more aggregate devices as the computer
from now on only sees one device, regardless of how many boxes
are plugged together.*
4:38 - All boxes plugged together via MH-Link are synched together as
of the first sample thanks to MH-Link's built-in clock signal.
4:54 -
*All conjoined boxes share their individual DSP power over MH-Link
to be used by one box, or shared by all boxes.*
6:22 - Then there's the usual SMPTE, WordClock, MIDI and D-Sub connectors.
6:00 - I also have *an old ULN-2* that I put a 3D board into and a MADI I/O
board and back-plate and* now it has optical, copper 64 MADI
channels*,
plus ADAT and USB-C and the usual analog I/O.
5:22 - Surprisingly we also have
*an old 2882 in a heavy steel casing and with a 3D card here and
the MADI I/O card* and back-plate we again have
optical, copper 64 MADI channels, plus ADAT and USB-C, this time
also
with AES-EBU thanks to the I/O card and back-plate.
7:12 -
*All products also receive a sound quality improvement due to
improved clocking, power supply management and power isolation.*
7:16 - The greatest improvement in sound goes to the MIO 2882 + 3D card that
now sports a sound quality similar to the ULN-8 + 2D (except that
of
course the ULN-8 + 3D card now sounds even better!) due to the
improved
clocking, improved power management and ground isolation.
7:56 - In the next few days I'll be back with BJ to wade through the
technical
details and what the FPGA chip means for DSP.