DAD Announces New Audio Format DADlink

DAD has announced its new audio format, DADlink, at AES booth 514. DADlink establishes a super-fast connection between the company’s base units, capable of handling up to 128 bidirectional channels with a latency of less than 100 nano seconds.

The actual channel count depends on the chosen samplerate, which can be any of the commonly used samplerate between 44.1kHz and 384kHz. In short, the DADlink format acts as a digital audio signal extension that connects directly into the 'belly', of the digital processing system of a DADlink-compatible unit.

"Since it is a proprietary format, we know every detail and corner of the systems on both sides of the connection, which is how we are able to minimize the latency and keep all aspects of the audio quality at a maximum," said Mikael Vest, Sales Director, DAD.

"Pritine audio quality has always been the name of our game, and if you use a DADlink connection it means that the analog audio signals have already been through our A/D converters - perhaps even our preamps. And within the digital domain, the transfer resolution via DADlink is happening at 28bit floating point, which adds another 96 dB of headroom for a total dynamic range of 237 dB. Further, also to preserve audio quality across independent units, phase alignment is applied within the system delay."

"Finally, the zero-latency connection is not just faster than any other formats, it is much faster. A MADI connection, which is often considered to offer ‘near-zero’ latency, is 2 samples, and <100 nano seconds actually equals 0.005 sample. In other words, DADlink is a staggering 400 times faster."