News

Merging Technologies Announces New PCI Express-format Mykerinos DSP Cards and Daughterboard Options For Pyramix DAW (25/1/2007)

The Pyramix Digital Audio Workstation, a product of Swiss company Merging Technologies, is already recognised as one of today's most powerful audio recording, processing and editing platforms by professionals in the audio and broadcast industries the world over. It offers simultaneous playback and recording of dozens of audio tracks at resolutions ranging from 16-bit, 44.1 kHz to DXD (352kHz) and DSD for SACD production.

Apart from its stable code base and carefully designed, approachable user interface, the foundation for all of Pyramix's recording and processing power is the Mykerinos PCI-format DSP card, at least one of which lies at the heart of all non-native Pyramix systems. Now, Merging have announced the sixth generation of the Mykerinos line, the MYK-X series cards, together with a range of associated I/O daughter cards, which will take Pyramix's already impressive capabilities to a new level, while maintaining the super-high quality of its predecessors.

Taking advantage of recent improvements in Philips' Tri Media processor technology, the MYK-X30 is no lightweight in the processing stakes; on the contrary, with 1.2 GFlops of peak processing power available and a memory bandwidth of 1600MB/second, it is the most powerful single-processor PCI Express audio card ever made, and well suited to supplying the DSP power required to drive the high-quality multi-channel recording and real-time mixing, panning and processing operations in typical Pyramix systems. And yet it's compact; it's a half-length PCI Express card, and even with one of its associated optional I/O daughter cards attached, it only takes up one PCIe slot in the host PC.

Translating this power into operational facts and figures, one single MYK-X30 card permits Pyramix systems to mix 48 channels and all their strip tools plug-ins simultaneously to stereo and surround busses. This represents a performance increase of well over 25 percent on the previous-generation Mykerinos card. And as with the older cards, multiple instances of the new card can be daisy-chained to provide still greater processing power. What's more, since most currently available PC motherboards feature both legacy 32-bit PCI and PCI Express card slots, users can freely mix and match their existing PCI Mykerinos cards and add further PCI Express MYK-X30s when they need to expand the performance or total I/O capabilities of their Pyramix system.

It's not just a question of the MYK-X30 being a faster, more powerful card. It offers onboard video sync input and output, and includes Longitudinal Time Code facilities (LTC). Its audio outputs have been improved, so that DSD monitoring is now possible via the built-in monitor outputs without prior conversion to PCM first.

The X30 is backwards-compatible with previous Mykerinos cards and I/O daughter cards, but Merging have nevertheless taken the opportunity afforded by the release of the new Mykerinos card to begin updating their range of I/O cards at the same time. The existing SDIF daughter card has undergone a firmware upgrade to expand its range of possible applications: both high-resolution PCM and DSD-format audio are now fully supported, as is the ability to input audio and metadata from Sony's vintage PCM1630 CD Mastering recorders. A new AES/EBU daughter card, the AES-EBU II DC, is planned for release in the first quarter of 2007, offering 24-channel I/O at up to 192kHz. Other daughter cards still at the planning stage at the time of writing include a replacement 16-channel ADAT/4-channel SPDIF card (with option boards to take it up to a maximum possible 64 channels of ADAT and 16 channels of SPDIF I/O); an Ethernet option card allowing up to 48 audio channels to be streamed simultaneously at standard recording rates with auxiliary and metadata, in accordance with the AES-50 or Sony SuperMAC standard.

Most amazing of all is the price. At the time of writing, Merging anticipate being able to offer the MYK-X30 at the same suggested retail price as the existing Mykerinos MB-5 card, due to the falling price of faster processing technology. For more details on the new MYK-X30 hardware, or to arrange a demonstration, contact your Merging dealer.

www.merging.com

[more DAW news]