Introducing flexAI

Incorporating AIXpressor and flexAIserver V2023-12r4

Introduction

Audio processing for broadcasting is in a near-constant state of evolution, and our industry finds itself in a time of "in-between" in many ways. One of the most obvious is the concurrent availability of proprietary hardware platforms with traditional I/O alongside software running on off-the-shelf servers using networked audio.

Such is the case with the two products that utilize flexAI as the underlying software platform to provide audio processing and encoding:

  • AIXpressor is a "traditional" integrated standalone hardware product that supports analog, AES3, MADI and SDI I/O in addition to AoIP.

  • flexAIserver is a hardware server running the same software but relying upon various Audio over IP (AoIP) protocols for its audio I/O.

Despite their obvious differences, the underlying operating system and software are very similar, enough so that it made more sense to create one set of documentation for both variations.

Where there are differences - most notably in the I/O configurations and the technical specifications - we've provided separate sections for each.

User Interface

While the AIXpressor has a touch-capable front panel control system, both it and flexAIserver are accessed via a browser-based TCP/IP web interface.

For 3rd party remote control, Junger highly recommends using the LAWO Ember+ protocol, which is widely distributed in the broadcast industry and which enjoys a robust and popular user community worldwide. More information about Ember+ is available at https://github.com/Lawo/ember-plus.

Connecting to an IP Network

There are also some differences in network setup between AIXpressor and flexAIserver.

AIXpressor has four integrated 1GB network ports. flexAIserver, on the other hand, may be configured with discrete NICs and will have a very different configuration when used on a VM.

It either case, however, DHCP is enabled by default on the port recommended for use as a control port to connect via a web browser, allowing more advanced network configuration to be done remotely.

On the AoIP side, users may choose between SMPTE ST 2110 (including support for AMWA IS-04 and IS-05), Livewire+, AES67 (Ravenna is on the road map).

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