Allen & Heath IDR4

DSP Audio System
The 1U rack or desk mount iDR-4 is the main unit in the iDR system having all the DSP (digital signal processing) power needed for 16 input and 16 output channels. The iDR-4 has a total of 6 balanced audio inputs including 2 XLR analogue mic/line and 4 TRS jack line inputs. It has 6 balanced audio outputs including 4 XLR analogue land 2 TRS jack line outputs.

iDR-4 Front Panel
The iDR-4 front panel has 8 soft keys plus 16 tri-colour LEDs. iDR-in and iDR-out expanders each have a further 8 LEDs. What these keys and LEDs do is up to the installer – they can be volume controls, source selectors and meters, they can recall patches, or in a fully protected system they can do nothing at all. iDR-4 has an LCD display which normally shows basic information such as time or unit name but can also show custom messages programmed into patches. iDR-4’s face plate can be removed for access to the unit’s internal clock, network setup and diagnostic menus. The face plate extrusion has a 13mm groove to fit adhesive labelling.

Audio Processing
At the heart of iDR-4 is a pair of powerful Motorola DSPs. Having so much processing muscle available has several major advantages:

1) iDR-4 has a fixed architecture with full processing for all inputs and outputs, so the installer does not have to think about conserving or allocating resources
2) No DSP or output delay expanders are needed - everything is included in the standard unit.

iDR-4’s processing includes preamp, fader, mute and polarity control, parametric EQ, crossover filters, compressors and gates with sidechain filter, limiters, crosspoint matrix, input and output patchbays, stereo/group linking, 16- level ducker, ambient noise sensing, automatic mic mixer, two independent pagers and signal generator for lineup tones and pink noise. The equivalent analogue processing equipment would easily fill several racks!

Audio I/O
The basic iDR-4 has 2 balanced XLR mic/line inputs, 4 balanced TRS line inputs, 4 balanced XLR line outputs, 2 balanced TRS line outputs and enough processing for the full 16x16 matrix. The high quality preamps feature programmable gain, pad and phantom power control on all XLR inputs.

Audio Monitor
iDR’s monitoring system is wonderfully convenient, flexible and powerful. Any point in the signal chain can be listened to via two of the TRS line outputs. Monitoring can be ‘daisy-chained’ through several iDR units, so the user can monitor any point in a big distributed system. Monitor source is selected manually or by dragging the mouse pointer over the iDR Manager software windows.

Remote Audio
Adding an iDR-in and / or an iDR-out expander to an iDR-4 brings the channel architecture up to 14x8, 8x14 or the full 14x14. The expanders can be sited up to 300 metres away from the main unit, making them ideal for local audio connection in distributed systems.