ISE 2016: Merging to mark 25th Anniversary

With the last day of March 2016 representing the end of the company’s 25th year of operation, Merging Technologies will be in celebratory mode at ISE this year, revealing new products and holding special offers.

Claude Cellier (pictured) founded the company in 1990 after his departure from Nagra and immediately embarked on a journey involving many ‘groundbreaking innovations’, Merging says, including Pyramix and the recently-introduced Ravenna/AES67 Networked Audio Interfaces, Horus and Hapi.

Coincident with ISE 2016, Merging has announced that it will release a new CoreAudio driver available for the whole AES67 community. This driver, dubbed Ravenna/AES67 Virtual Audio Device, is fully compliant with Ravenna and automatically compatible with Dante now it is joining the AES67 community, and was designed as an easy way for Mac users to connect to the majority of Networked Audio Devices. ‘The really big news’ according to the manufacturer, is that this will be a free-of-charge download from the Merging website. The Virtual Audio Device will support full operation of up to 64 channels in and out at 44.1/48kHz.

The existing CoreAudio driver for Merging’s products continues to accommodate higher sampling rates up to DXD/384 kHz and DSD256 to support the Horus and Hapi range of converters. A third CoreAudio driver has also been created for the company’s new consumer DAC product, the Merging NADAC.

An initiative to introduce new Horus and Hapi users to Pyramix was announced at IBC 2015, and the promotion has now been extended until the end of March 2016. Anyone purchasing a new Horus or Hapi will get a free copy of Pyramix Essentials and the SafeNet dongle. In the event of the customer opting for a higher value pack, the cost of the Essentials pack is deducted but a new dongle will need to be purchased, if the user does not already have one.

Summarising the company’s position, Merging president Claude Cellier remarked: “Remaining ahead of the game has always been a strong motivation for Merging, but never easy to achieve. However, we do believe that the introduction of Horus in 2012 introduced something remarkably different for our users. Making it easier for people to embark on the networking adventure is something we wanted to do at the appropriate time and now seems to be perfect. With a strong MNA Alliance presence at ISE and with so many manufacturers now supporting AES67, we think it will be of great interest.”

http://www.merging.com