The team at Swiss audio company Merging have come up with a new take on the desktop interface. Anubis is a new breed of interface connecting to your host computer via the Ravenna AoIP protocol.

Merging Anubis

It’s great to see companies like Merging taking smaller facilities seriously. Their Hapi and Horus rack mounted interfaces are far from inexpensive but Anubis (the ancient Egyptian god of embalming and the dead, just so you know) comes in at $1495 for the Pro version and handles sample rates up to 192kHz. The Premium unit which allows operation for high resolution audio up to 384kHz and DXD and all flavours of DSD up to 256 is $1995.

One Unit, Many Missions

Anubis introduces a new concept called “Modular by Software”. Essentially the same hardware can be used for totally different workflows or what Merging have called “Missions”.

One mission could be managing your multichannel monitoring in the control room and another Mission might be recording yourself in the studio. The Monitor Mission requires control of multiple speaker sets and headphones with built in talkback, bass management and time alignment plus a host of other features that are essential to manage your listening environment. The Music Mission would need low latency mixing, control of cue feeds, innovative plug-ins, superb mic pres and all the features needed to be the essential musician’s companion.

This flexibility can be attributed to Anubis being the first home-grown product to utilise the powerful ZMAN media transport technology that is already shipping to OEM customers. ZMAN does not just manage AES67 connectivity, it also has some serious on-board DSP/FPGA processing that provides a host of other programmable features.

Key Features

• Instant network integration and expand your network IO at any time.

• Desktop compact size easy to carry on.

• Direct Monitoring of any DAW on the network running on Windows, macOS and Linux

• Easy selection of any RAVENNA or AES67 streams on the network from a list, without the need for any dedicated routing tools

• Ambisonic sources from 1st to 7th order are automatically decoded to the active monitor speaker set

• 2x Mastering grade Mic Preamps and Headphone Amps

• Sampling rates up to 192kHz (Pro edition) and up to DXD / 384kHz (Premium edition)

• DSD support up to DSD256 (Premium edition)

• Cough Cut on every input

• Plus of course all state of the art monitoring features (Bass management, Speaker alignment, Talkback, Down-mix, Crossfeed, etc…)

Build On Your Network

Anubis can be thought of as a significant enhancement to Merging’s already popular Networked Audio Interface range. This exceptionally compact audio interface is a standalone 32-bit A/D and D/A capable of handling microphone or line level inputs and four analog line outputs, plus two high quality headphone outputs. The large rotary encoder allows for precise monitoring volume control but also makes parameter adjustment simple, while the multi-touch display and dedicated buttons provide intuitive selection of whatever needs to be controlled. Built in talkback, cue circuits and speaker management functions make this an ideal unit in any control room.

The real power of Anubis becomes evident as soon as it becomes part of a larger network. Designed to fit into an AES67 or ST2110 environment, it is remarkably scalable when coupled with Merging’s Hapi or Horus units, or indeed any other AES67 devices. At this point, the additional I/O allows Anubis to become the centre of an up to 256 x 256 matrix with the control of incoming and outgoing streams.

Instantly, tasks such as immersive audio monitor control become simple. In addition to audio I/O, Anubis also has GPIO or MIDI connectivity, a range of drivers covering MacOS, Windows and Linux, Ambisonic decoding and cough cut on every input. Anubis can be powered from its own power supply, battery and/or PoE (Power over Ethernet) if redundancy is required and can be placed on a desktop or mounted on a standard microphone stand.

Key to the evolution of Anubis in the future, is the concept of Modular by Software. This means the identical hardware unit can be reconfigured to do a completely different function by loading alternate programs. This changes the UI to suit the ideal workflow and reconfigures the Anubis engine for the chosen program, giving you even more features. This not only gives the user added utility, it also offers a simple upgrade path to future applications.

Although the Monitor Mission and the Music Mission are planned for 2019, Merging also have several other missions planned (sounds like NASA) and this will be introduced in the future to cater for a number of different markets.

You can find out more about Anubis at the Merging website.

Check out the Merging Anubis teaser video below. We hope to get a unit in for review very soon.