AES50

showstack / protocols / aes50

Also called SuperMAC, HRMAI.

An AES open standard for bidirectional, low-latency multichannel digital audio over Cat5 cable, built into the Behringer/Midas/Klark Teknik console ecosystem (X32, WING, M32, DL/XL series) to link stageboxes, consoles, and processing without an analog snake.

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Media Large, continuous, on time and in order

Continuous streams that are large enough to be sized properly, and that must arrive in order and on time.

What kills it. Anything that starves the link — usually a management transfer nobody scheduled — and jitter that outruns the receive buffer.

The four flows, and why the model is worth having →

What it carries

Sample rates: 48 kHz, 96 kHz
Audio bit depth: 24-bit
Audio channels: up to 48
Audio encoding: Linear PCM over Cat5, layer 1 rather than Ethernet

Audio: 48 channels each direction per link at 48 kHz, dropping to 24 at 96 kHz. The count is per link and bidirectional, which is why a console and a stagebox need one cable rather than two.

What goes wrong

Runs over Cat5/Cat5e cable and RJ45s but is not standard routable Ethernet - AES50 ports cannot simply be plugged into a network switch.

Point-to-point by design; star/hub topologies require dedicated AES50 routers rather than off-the-shelf Ethernet switches.

Channel count trades off against sample rate: up to 48 channels at 48kHz drops to 24 channels at 96kHz per link.

What speaks AES50 (6)

Product	Direction	Notes
Allen & Heath dLive S7000 Allen & Heath	bidirectional	Via card, for compatibility with AES50 stage boxes.
Allen & Heath SQ-6 Allen & Heath	bidirectional	SLink port supports AES50-compatible expanders.
Behringer X32 Behringer	bidirectional	Two AES50 ports for S16 / S32 stage boxes.
DiGiCo SD12 DiGiCo	bidirectional	Depending on fitted option.
Midas HD96-24 Midas	bidirectional	AES50 to DL stage boxes, the Midas and Klark Teknik backbone.
Powersoft X8 Powersoft	in	Not supported; listed here only to prevent confusion.

Sources

Understand the mechanism

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Something wrong, or missing?

Known gaps on this entry: default_ports, first_published, implementations. If you can source one of them, that is a ten minute pull request.

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