Miles of copper cable can, and often does, present problems in live broadcast situations, particularly when a broadcaster is covering a movable feast like one of the major events on the PGA Tour, or a prestigious sporting event with millions of viewers all over the world.
NetworkSound provides Mamba Digital snake systems to cover the international feeds for all major championship events. For example, the recent Players championship international feed used six Mamba systems and exclusively for Live@17, the famous Par 3 island hole.
Mamba Fiber system is a derivative of the Mamba Cat5/6 system tailored toward the broadcast industry. An early version of this product, introduced at the 2004 AES show, was the company’s first attempt to replace bulky analog snakes with digital fiber capable of transmitting 128 channels (64 in and out) on a single Cat5/6. Mamba Digital Snakes can be built with any combination of analog or digital connections (ADAT pipeline in, for example, AES/EBU on the mixer side).
The Mamba fiber system uses the latest WDM fiber technology to deliver up to 128 channels of uncompressed pro audio over a single strand of fiber. The WDM allows a single fiber to carry both TX and RX using different wavelengths, reducing the cost of fiber by approximately 50 percent. Configurations of 16 x 16, 32 x 32, and up to 64 in x 64 out are available, and a redundant fiber strand is included.
The NetworkSound synchronous audio technology is constantly monitoring the active cable. If it’s compromised, a switch to the backup strand takes place in less than a millisecond.
The Mamba Fiber System can coexist with Internet technologies (a video camera running over an IP network, or a scoring system using standard Internet, are examples) using off-the-shelf Gigabit Fiber switch. Bandwidth is shared across all traffic with no loss of synchronization or dip in audio quality through the Mamba Digital Snake system.
Broadcast engineers have been asking NetworkSound for a fiber system that can carry multiple AES/EBU channels over a single fiber and the company is about to release a product designed to fill that need. Check the company’s website (www.networksound.com) for release dates.
