mLAN, short for Music Local Area Network, is a protocol for synchronized transmission and management of multi-channel digital audio, video, control signals and multi-port

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, an ...

over a network.

Description

The mLAN protocol was originally developed by

Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle d ...

, and publicly introduced in January 2000. It was available under a royalty-free license to anyone interested in utilizing the technology. mLAN exploits several features of the

IEEE 1394 IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony ...

(FireWire) standard such as isochronous transfer and intelligent connection management. There are two versions of the mLAN protocol. Version 1 requires S200 rate, while Version 2 requires S400 rate and supports synchronized streaming of digital audio at up to 24 bit

word length In computing, a word is the natural unit of data used by a particular processor design. A word is a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor. The number of bits or digits in a word (the ''word ...

and 192 kHz

sample rate In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of "samples". A sample is a value of the signal at a point in time and/or s ...

, MIDI and

word clock In digital audio electronics, a word clock or wordclock (sometimes sample clock, which can have a broader meaning) is a clock signal used to synchronise other devices, such as digital audio tape machines and compact disc players, which interc ...

at a

bitrate In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction w ...

up to 400 Megabits per second. With the proper driver software, a computer-based

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integra ...

can interact with mLAN-compliant hardware via any OHCI-compliant FireWire port. mLAN consumes the entire bus bandwidth when operating and non-mLAN devices cannot share the same Firewire connection, so it is not possible to use hard drives, optical drives or other sound devices on the same Firewire bus when mLAN Manager software is running. The transport layers of mLAN have been standardized as IEC 61883.

End of life

By 2005, over 100 manufacturers were part of the mLAN AllianceAudio Interface Manufacturers' Round Table
/ref> however very few actual products had surfaced. As of early 2008, mLAN appeared to have reached the end of its product life. Third-party developers discontinued or retracted their mLAN products from the market, and Yamaha itself ceased any new releases of mLAN hardware or updates to the mLAN software and drivers. Even though more recent FireWire based products from Yamaha could interoperate with earlier mLAN devices using a computer, any mention of mLAN is notably absent from new product announcements and driver updates.

Products

* Yamaha 01X digital mixing hub * Yamaha i88x audio/MIDI interface * Yamaha mLAN8E Expansion Board for Yamaha A5000/A4000 samplers and Yamaha CS6x/CS6R/S80 synthesizers * Yamaha mLAN16E/mLAN16E2 options for

Yamaha Motif The Yamaha Motif is a series of music workstation synthesizers, first released by Yamaha Corporation in August 2001. The Motif replaced the EX series in Yamaha's line-up and was also based on the early Yamaha S series. Other workstations in the ...

, Yamaha Motif ES, Yamaha S90 ES, Yamaha Motif XS, Yamaha Motif-Rack XS * Yamaha MY16-mLAN option for Yamaha digital mixers * Korg EXB-mLAN option for

Korg Triton Rack , founded as Keio Electronic Laboratories, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners. Under the Vox brand name, t ...

and

Korg Triton Studio , founded as Keio Electronic Laboratories, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners. Under the Vox brand name, the ...

* Presonus FIREStation audio/MIDI interface * Kurzweil KMLN8 8 Channel mLAN I/O option for KSP-8 Multi-Channel effects processor

References

External links

mLAN SCAM forum without members, even though it claims to have many

mLAN Central

01xray

Save Mlan on the Mac
hosted b
Chrismcc
* https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=505869 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mlan Digital audio Audio network protocols

Description

End of life

Products

See also

References

External links