DirectOut

I want to talk to you about a problem I faced on more than one show. You are at an event, you have audio coming off your stage boxes in one format speaking directly to your front of house console. Your monitor engineer is on a different console altogether, different brand. You've got broadcasts, they want their own separate feed. And these are all professional audio standards. One is MADI, the other one is Dante, the other one is Ravenna, and none of them naturally talk to each other. I've been on shows where I needed 3 separate devices just to connect 3 consoles so that I can patch them all to the main PA. So 3 devices, and even with all of that, it was still not clean. Try connecting 2 consoles, both sending AES audio. The clocking between them is different, the audio glitches, and you simply cannot mix them. And then there were the analog input limitations. You know, never enough inputs to properly feed a full speaker system with left, right, center, front fills, and subs from like more than one mixer. You know, you would hit the ceiling of the equipment long before you hit the ceiling of what the show actually required, mostly with like multiple international artists performing on the same show. Basically now over the years, I've watched one company become best in class at solving exactly this, sending audio between different consoles, getting signal to multiple destinations, all of it even with the format at the destinations completely different from the format at the source. In Africa, where we are already working with less time and fewer backup options, you know, that we could— that we really like, that capability alone changes everything. That company is DirectOut Technologies. DirectOut Technologies was founded in 2008 in Germany by a team of professional sound engineers led by Stefan Flock. Here's what makes them different. Every single person on their development team is still an active working sound engineer, not people who used to work in audio and moved into product development. Engineers who are still, you know, doing shows, still, you know, troubleshooting the same problems that you and I face. That is rare in this industry. And it is why their product that also solve real problems rather than theoretical ones. What they do in the simplest terms, they basically build hardware that acts as a bridge between different audio formats. Whatever protocol your system is running, DirectOut basically translates between them, routes audio to every destination you need, and also protects the entire signal path with Automatic redundancy. Say for example, you've got AES as your main signal send and analog is your backup. If one path fails, the system also self-corrects in under 3 milliseconds without a single audible interruption. So basically the show keeps on going, but the audience never knows, you know, that something actually died in the middle. Let me tell you where this has been trusted. On modern large-scale tours, artists perform alongside prerecorded elements like backing tracks, additional layers, and instrument sounds that basically make a live show complete. Those elements need to be fed in perfect sync to multiple consoles depending on the setup, you know, at the same time in whatever format each console requires it. For artists including DRAC and Kendrick Lamar as well, those live playback systems have been built around DirectOut, the same solution that solves the protocol problem I also described at the start, receiving audio in one format, converting it instantly, and routing it to every destination on stage and also at front of house without a single point of failure as well. Because the whole system is just that efficient. Coldplay, one of the biggest touring bands in the world as well, have used the DirectOut Prodigy on a series of tours. Their head audio engineer said it reduced their footprint and weight and actually added functionality. Not really a compromise, but it was actually an upgrade. The Eurovision Song Contest, you know, which basically goes live in more than 50 countries and is watched by over 200 million people, their entire audio infrastructure relies on DirectOut2 to basically ensure that not even one frame of audio gets lost. 3 very different shows, 3 very different scales, but one brand at the center of them all. As productions in Africa grow, and they are growing fast, the technical complexity is also growing with them. More consoles, more feeds, more audio formats, more points where things can actually go wrong if the infrastructure is not designed properly. The difference between a show that keeps going and a show that stops is often one piece of gear, the piece that sits at the center of your audio network and speaks every language, basically builds every bridge and never lets a failure reach the audience. Having a direct-out solution in your inventory to me is a no-brainer, and the more serious our productions become or the more complex they become, the more you understand why. You are only considered a professional when you use professional tools. I'm Remember, thanks for watching.