MADI

Optical MADI is everywhere in broadcast - OB trucks, broadcast centres, temporary installations. It covers distances that coax can’t, it’s immune to ground loops, and a single fibre carries the same 64 channels as a coax cable. Most MADI-capable equipment implements the optical interface via an SFP cage, which gives you flexibility in connector type and fibre distance - provided you use the right module. This sounds straightforward. In practice, it causes more problems than it should, because the SFP cage is a standard physical form factor but the signal going through it is not standard Ethernet. Getting this wrong means no audio and no obvious error message to explain why. ...

The audio world has its own version of the IP debate, and if you’ve spent any time around broadcast engineers in the last few years, you’ll have heard it. MADI is old technology. AoIP is the future. Dante, Ravenna, AES67 - that’s where everything is heading, and anyone still specifying MADI is stuck in the past. I’ve heard this argument a lot. I’ve also spent years working with both technologies at major live events, and my view is considerably more nuanced. ...