The new Merging Audio Device replaces the legacy RAVENNA/AES67 ASIO Driver and provides owners of a Merging (Anubis, Hapi, Horus) or Neumann (MT 48) networked interface with more flexibility in their workflows.
The first of the major enhancements is a multi-ASIO capability that allows different applications to run simultaneously sharing ASIO inputs and outputs. Additionally, internal bridging allows channels to be defined to send audio between applications concurrently using MAD. ASIO is the most popular driver option for the recording industry but there are other markets where the official Microsoft WDM (Windows Driver Model) is essential and this is now incorporated into MAD. This addition makes the MERGING+ANUBIS the definitive audio interface for gaming and Esports. The combination of ASIO and WDM gives enormous flexibility by allowing WDM channels to be sent or mixed to the same outputs as ASIO or redirected to the bridge channels. This permits these channels to be routed or recorded by the ASIO applications. The implications are huge because this enables the user to listen to his favorite DAW whilst comparing his track with playback from applications like Spotify or YouTube.
Delving a bit deeper into the capabilities of MAD, it is possible to have the ASIO and WDM applications at different sample rates as the WDM has its own Sampling Rate Converter which will automatically convert to the ASIO rate. This allows a recording to be compiled on the ASIO side with some files coming from a WDM source with a higher or lower rate.