Binaural Audio Over MADI, the General Case

Most third party equipment (e.g. RME, Lawo) treats the AES streams from a MADI interface as 32 linked pairs, A and B channel together. So in the general case, the following strategy should be used to route the AES streams for binaural audio:

In the card/port configuration screen in EHX, the panels should be defined on the odd numbered ports (taking the first port as 1) of the E-MADI card. The even numbered ports should be set to ‘Panel Aux’ to accommodate the second channel of audio. See the image below.

Optocore/ProGrid MADIs allow each channel of the MADI to be routed individually to any channel of any destination. The AES streams do not have to be routed and configured in pairs. The ProGrid equipment allows fully flexible routing and it is possible to mix close packed mono and conventional stereo pairs on one MADI interface.

It is the routing matrix in the ProGrid equipment that is used to get the main panel port to the A channel of the AES interface. Also, it is the routing matrix in the ProGrid that is used to pair the audio channels as required.

In all cases, when using a router such as ProGrid, ensure that the configuration of the E-MADI card and the configuration of the ProGrid matrix are consistent with each other. 

For example, if ports 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,11… are defined as panels in EHX, the ProGrid must be used to ensure that the channels 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,11… are routed to and from the A channels of the AES interfaces.