Review: Blackmagic Design Teranex 2D Media Processor

Audio

As mentioned earlier, Teranex includes two DB-25 connectors, one for analog input/output and the other for digital audio input/output.

For our testing, we used two AES/EBU snakes provided by Blackmagic Design, which each run about $60 on the open market. The snakes are listed by Hosa Technology as “AES/EBU Yamaha pinout” 8-channel snakes since the same cables can be used for 8-channel Yamaha or ADAT devices, but they work equally well for our testing for analog I/O as well.

On the analog front, the 8-connector DB-25 cable input 4 channels of audio and 4 channels of pre-selected audio. In addition, a pair of RCA connectors allows a line-level unbalanced pair of channels. For the AES/EBU inputs, 8 channels (four stereo pairs) can be input and an additional four stereo pairs can be output. This ability to do 8 channels of digital audio is one feature the 3D version does not have, as the 3D unit foregoes the DB-25 connectors and analog video inputs, sharing built-in between analog and digital (AES) inputs and outputs.

Audio is also provided via SDI using pre-embedded audio channels, up to four channels of audio per SDI input. In our tests, we needed to select EMBED after we selected the IN button and chose SDI for the video source. The same is true with HDMI input sources, as any audio carried into Teranex on HDMI is considered embedded audio.

One nice feature, for those that send program audio across the SDI input, is the fact that Teranex units can break out embedded SDI audio to either the analog or AES/EBU cables, allowing Teranex to act as a de-embedder. The audio status buttons on the Teranex front panel allow up to 16 channels (8 stereo pairs) of embedded audio, but only eight channels of audio (four stereo pairs) can then be monitored with the audio metering feature included in the UltraScope application. Each of the eight channels is monitored independently, however, allowing for certain surround sound discrete signals to transmit along SDI with the video for de-encoding and local VU or dBFS monitoring.

Lighting-fast Capture With Thunderbolt

On the Thunderbolt front, Blackmagic is one of just a few companies to have an established wide range of Thunderbolt-certified products--a technology they first moved to when early Intensity Shuttle’s USB 3 devices were limited by chipset incompatibilities on many early Windows-based motherboards.

One workflow conundrum we ran into with the Teranex, though, was the end-of-chain requirement faced when using the device with other Thunderbolt-equipped products.

For instance, in one setup, we had the Teranex 2D along with a Promise Pegasus R6 for storage. As the Teranex only has a single Thunderbolt connector, it must be placed at the end of the Thunderbolt daisy chain, meaning the dual-Thunderbolt Pegasus R6 storage was in the middle between the Teranex and the Mac computer. This unnecessarily fills the PCI-Express pipe, and also precludes the use of a second Gigabit Ethernet port that we like to use for portable encoding.

In addition, the lack of dual Thunderbolt ports on the Teranex meant that we also couldn’t drive the Thunderbolt monitor at the end of the chain--which Apple and Intel both recommend--when using a Mac with only one Thunderbolt port. Hopefully newer versions of Teranex units will address this limitation if Blackmagic opts to upgrade to the newer Thunderbolt 2 transport for 4K encoding.