New product: Arvus H1-D

[Littletycoon]

Seems to be Dante only for the moment

 

[Littletycoon]

They don't, but without any aoip support it's a non functioning product

 

[Littletycoon]

You are right. Then only headphone out would work for now? That'd be disappointing (an understatement).

 

[aphysically]

assuming they eventually figure it out is there any relatively economical option to get 16ch (or at least 8) from either Ravenna or Dante or AES67 into AES3/(via db25 maybe ideally). Seeing options at around $2000-$2500..? Given the H1-D beta is being offered at $2500 it just seems surprising a conversion device can’t be had for much less than the same

 

[juliangst]

assuming they eventually figure it out is there any relatively economical option to get 16ch (or at least 8) from either Ravenna or Dante or AES67 into AES3/(via db25 maybe ideally). Seeing options at around $2000-$2500..?

The Focusrite RedNet D16R MKII has Dante in/outputs and 16 channels of AES/EBU in/outputs for around 2600€

 

[tehas]

I messaged Matthew from Arvus with a link to this thread asking:

One follow up question - The H-1D Beta release does not list any AoIP support - neither AES67, nor Dante nor Ravenna. Was this an accidental omission? Or will there truly not be any networked audio support until a future release?
There's some consternation about this on audiosciencereview forums as well: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-product-arvus-h1-d.47117/page-6#post-1774320

His response is copied below, with his permission:

LOL - it will FULLY support Dante and AES67 (Dante up to 48k and AES67 up to 96k - all at 16 channels)

I will update to make this clear next week

 

[VincentM]

The H1-D could be an interesting box to connect to the Trinnov Nova for an all digital 5.1 set up.

Apple TV -> H1-D -> Trinnov Nova -> Amps

 

[juliangst]

It's really a niche product.
Pros that mix and master atmos music can just play their and other music through MacOS and consumers probably want more features like upsampling, other formats or room correction.

The only scenario I can think off where the H1-D would make sense is in a fully digital Atmos listening setup with Dante enabled speakers with built-in room correction like Neumann AES67 speakers or Genelec 9401A connected to the Genelec SAM speakers.

 

[hfusn]

That’s great but some clarity is still missing. AES67 is not an audio over IP protocol. It’s only an interoperability standard that audio over ip protocols can choose to adhere to. So what is the actual protocol the box uses? It’s obviously not Dante, otherwise it wouldn’t have the 24/48 limit for only Dante. He says that Ravenna is only coming sometime down the road. If it’s using an AES67 compliant protocol right out of the gate, it would be both Dante and Ravenna compliant right out of the gate as well.

Yes, this is still not clear. It seems that this device is compatible with Dante trough Dante's AES67 mode, which is limited to 48khz. If this is the case, then it does not "FULLY" support Dante.

 

[aphysically]

Anyone know if the Arvus H2-4D supports phantom center layouts? I guess I would need to come up with something to handle that digitally if not and I went with this solution

 

[hfusn]

I’m curious which AES67 compliant protocol doesn’t support both Dante and Ravenna. Because if it doesn’t support both, it wouldn’t be AES67 compliant.

AES67 does not "FULLY" support either Dante or Ravenna. There are features in both Dante and Ravenna that are not available if your device only offers the AES67 feature set. AES67 is like a lowest common denominator for audio over IP. I do think that the wording could be better here, both in the manufacturer's statement to tehas and in the product page. Anyway, it looks like a great little device that does exactly what studios with immersive setups need to reference commercial content.

 

[aphysically]

I emailed to ask and they don’t support any layouts with a phantom center, so if I want to use that I’ll need to do the crossover myself with another device. Any ideas/suggestions for something that can do it digitally?

 

[tehas]

@DSPman noob question - why is hdmi clock sync important ? ie what effect would we see if the audio is synced to the master clock on some IP network ? is the concern pops and clicks in the audio? or losing lip-sync?

 

[aphysically]

On the fence here for my Genelec system (can take all digital as input). They mentioned updating to support new 3d audio formats in the years to come, but the h2-4d hasn’t been updated and I might prefer that to avoid dealing with audio over ip unless needed. The h2-4d also seems to support wider sample rates in audio over ip; although it’s with sample rates I wouldn’t use, I’m curious where the difference is. H1-D supports HDMI 2.1 as well as opposed to HDMI 2.0 on H2-4D, but I’m not sure it’s super relevant since I would likely use eARC.

 

[tehas]

If you’re interested in having the audio in sync with the video it’s important. I don’t know anyone who likes to watch movies where the audio isn’t in sync with the video. The only way to sync the audio and video properly is by using a common reference clock between the incoming HDMI stream and the Dante/AES67. Dante Embedded can’t do this. And it’s likely their Native AES67 can’t either.

Forgive me for being stupid, but I still don't understand.
eg - how does a consumer grade avr maintain sync between audio and video? once the audio in the incoming hdmi stream is extracted, it is decoded, has room correction (audyssey etc) applied to it - does this happen in sync with the hdmi clock? or does the delay introduced by this process mean it is on a different clock already ?
Thanks!

 

[tehas]

thank you !

 

[Matt_Holland]

I emailed to ask and they don’t support any layouts with a phantom center, so if I want to use that I’ll need to do the crossover myself with another device. Any ideas/suggestions for something that can do it digitally?

The only solution I can think of is to use a DSP pre/mixer or an amplifier that has input routing. There are countless pro audio products that can do this. The idea is to route the centre channel input to the Left and Right outputs. So the left output would play Left + Centre, etc. The input gain setting on the Centre channel would adjust the balance of centre channel to Left/Right in the mix.

I have no idea if this is the correct way to do this.

 

[ShadyHarbinger]

The reason a consumer grade AVR syncs the audio and video is it inputs the HDMI, then re-clocks both the audio and video together in-sync. Compensating for any latency caused by the decoding DSP. Then you connect the TV to the HDMI output of the AVR that has both the audio and video in sync with a common reference clock.

If you have a smart soundbar with the latest eARC chips being used on the eARC input, it’s a bi-directional system that tells the TV the exact latency that the soundbar is adding for the surround format decoding. And the chip inside the TV compensates for this and syncs the video to the audio output of the soundbar.

It is possible to make a box like this Avrus smart like a Sonos soundbar with eARC as well. But not without the latest eARC HDMI 2.1 chips, along with a hardware based audio over IP solution. Such as a Merging ZMAN, Dante Brooklyn 3, or even a Zynq based Dante IP core solution. But not with software based solutions.

Seems H1-D is DoA. I am sad. Too many drawbacks.

 

[chelgrian]

The reason a consumer grade AVR syncs the audio and video is it inputs the HDMI, then re-clocks both the audio and video together in-sync. Compensating for any latency caused by the decoding DSP. Then you connect the TV to the HDMI output of the AVR that has both the audio and video in sync with a common reference clock.

If you have a smart soundbar with the latest eARC chips being used on the eARC input, it’s a bi-directional system that tells the TV the exact latency that the soundbar is adding for the surround format decoding. And the chip inside the TV compensates for this and syncs the video to the audio output of the soundbar.

It is possible to make a box like this Avrus smart like a Sonos soundbar with eARC as well. But not without the latest eARC HDMI 2.1 chips, along with a hardware based audio over IP solution. Such as a Merging ZMAN, Dante Brooklyn 3, or even a Zynq based Dante IP core solution. But not with software based solutions.

HDMI is a packetised protocol with interleaved video and audio. There is a data clock but no specific video or audio clocks. It relies upon the data already being in sync when it is transmitted.

Brooklyn 3 is a drop in replacement for Brooklyn 2 so Arvus should just be able to swap and carry on.

These boxes are designed for studio use so as long as the latencies are constant they are dealt with at install time manually. In general the box has no way to know what latency a monitor controller or loudspeaker management system is introducing thus that has to be dealt with by the system integrator.

It is perfectly possible to do a constant latency using software Dante however the minimum latency using Audinate's solution is 4ms where as it's possible to do less than 1ms using hardware.

 

[Vulcan]

That’s great but some clarity is still missing. AES67 is not an audio over IP protocol. It’s only an interoperability standard that audio over ip protocols can choose to adhere to. So what is the actual protocol the box uses? It’s obviously not Dante, otherwise it wouldn’t have the 24/48 limit for only Dante. He says that Ravenna is only coming sometime down the road. If it’s using an AES67 compliant protocol right out of the gate, it would be both Dante and Ravenna compliant right out of the gate as well.

AES 67 is an audio over IP protocol and allows for interoperability between other protocols. According to their latest newsletter this box supports Dante up to 48 kHz (due to limitations in the Dante protocol), and AES67 up to 96 kHz.