Klark Teknik has announced several major developments with regard to the AES50 protocol.
The UK manufacturer, which owns the intellectual property of the SuperMAC and HyperMAC core designs, has signed agreements with specialist third party developer companies AuviTran and ZP Engineering to make SuperMAC and HyperMAC technology available to the audio industry on a royalty-free basis. This will be in the form of Software Development Kits (SDKs) for use with Xilinx Spartan-3E and -3S series field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The SuperMAC SDK has already been released to the development partners and the HyperMAC SDK is expected to be released in Q4 2009.
Audio manufacturers looking to adopt SuperMAC and HyperMAC should contact Auvitran and ZP Engineering, who can offer modules for easy integration as well as custom design solutions. In addition to signing a contract with the chosen developer, the manufacturer will need to sign a one-off sub-licence agreement with Klark Teknik parent company Telex Communications (UK) to incorporate SuperMAC and/or HyperMAC in their products, for a one-off fee of £500 towards administration costs. No further fees are payable to Klark Teknik including royalties on either a per connection or per channel basis.
Klark Teknik and Midas have also joined together with AuviTran, ZP Engineering and Lynx Studio Technology to form the AES50 Trade Association, promoting the adoption of the AES50-2005 standard by professional audio manufacturers and end users, as well as in other industries. The AES50 Trade Association is committed to an open standards approach to audio technology and is keen to promote a co-operative approach between manufacturers, as well as working closely with the AES on the future development of audio networking. Klark Teknik has set up the AES50 Trade Association and web site (www.aes50ta.org) and will hand over operation to a committee formed by the founder members in the first half of 2010. Elections for the committee will take place on an annual basis and will be open to all members.
About AuviTran: Based in France, AuviTran designs and manufactures innovative professional audio networking solutions and products and is a provider of EtherSound OEM cards to pro audio manufacturers. AuviTran acts also as software provider and as a manufacturer of EtherSound products through a worldwide distribution network.
About ZP Engineering: ZP Engineering is a design house based in Italy focusing on digital audio products, with design capabilities including DSP and FPGA development, complete embedded systems and high-performance conversion stages. Current focus is on fixed-point and floating-point audio processing, high-quality digital audio transmission over Cat 5 and coax, connectivity to computers (USB, IEEE-1394, Ethernet), embedded Linux development and high-performance A/D and D/A conversion.
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