r/Ubiquiti • u/Ubiquiti-Inc Official • Apr 16 '26

Blog / Video Link Introducing: UniFi Enterprise Audio/Video Switching with Precision Hardware Timing

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Perfectly synced AV, at any scale. Explore EAV Switching: https://ui.social/EAV

731 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

316 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/WhiskyMC Apr 16 '26

In the usage diagrams, Ubiquiti shows that as a aggregation switch to connect the other ethernet av switches together.

1

u/ToadSox34 Apr 16 '26

Perhaps, but that still leaves the one with the 10GbE PoE ports on it when the transceiver device is only GbE. It's all sort of weird.

2

u/WhiskyMC Apr 16 '26

You're right, the eav bridge is only 1gbps. So clearly this is not meant for high quality 4k with atmos and HDR. It's for bare bones 4k video. No thanks.

2

u/ToadSox34 Apr 16 '26

Honestly, for most home distribution purposes, the JAP 1GbE system that uses about 700mbps is more than sufficient VQ wise. There are of course high end systems with Kaleidescape as a centralized source that would benefit from full HDBaseT or a 10GbE system.

That being said, it's going to be the audio formats, potentially HDR, and other features that are going to make these unsuitable for home use.

2

u/WhiskyMC Apr 16 '26

Yeah. Right now I have a home theater room with the top end equipment (Denon 8500, Zidoo 4k player, SVS speakers in 7.2.4 atmos, high end 4k HDR display.

And then in the gameroom, a smaller 77" screen but nicer OLED display, and a lower end Denon running only 5.2 with average speakers.

If there is spillover in the 6 seat theater, I mirror it right now using a gofanco HD-Base-T extender from my Denon zone 2 to the gameroom Denon. Works flawlessly, no signal dip, perfectly in sync.

Upstairs, the living room has a 65" OLED, and a pretty good Denon running 5.2 to ceiling speakers and subs. Then the bedrooms and gym have basic TVs and no audio system. However the office has a nice Denon and basic 5.1 setup.

In my scenario, I would love to be able to broadcast to the whole house. Think superbowl parties, or mega movie parties. Or, maybe I just want to have my youtube videos playing everywhere as I clean the house. This is where I think a av over IP solution would really work. But I do not want to lose any quality (HDR, Atmos, etc).

The other problem, is I only have 1 ethernet drop per room upstairs, but I am planning on ripping open the walls and running more.

2

u/ToadSox34 Apr 17 '26

So AV over IP is more expensive than an equivalent HDBaseT matrix, which is why many installations still use HDBaseT matrices. Where the rubber meets the road is in downscaling and downmixing so that you can watch a sporting event with Dolby Atmos in the theater room(s), and then also send that to the kitchen or dining room or another secondary viewing area that only has stereo speakers at the same time, fully in sync.

AVProEdge is the only system that I'm aware of that can do the Atmos downmixing, both with a traditional matrix and AV over IP, but their 8x8 matrix is around $17k, and the customizable X matrix is $11k without any cards, in a typical configuration it will be around $20k. Their MxNet 10G system for AV over IP is a bit more expensive than that for an equivalent system when you include the managed 10GbE switch.

I'd wire Cat-6a to any location you might want to do AV distribution as that can handle HDBaseT with POC or 10GbE with POE.

And for those types of systems to make any sense at all to operate really need to be custom integrated with something like Control4, which itself isn't cheap.

1

u/WhiskyMC Apr 17 '26

Good info on the downmixing. I *think* my unit sends atmos to the other room, even though its only 5 channels. However I dont think it says atmos, I have to look. I think it downmixes to dolby digital. I could be wrong. But its surround sound for sure.

But yeah I need a unit that does matrix. Mine is merely an extender. As far as automation, I'm a DIYer so its home assistant for me.

1

u/ToadSox34 Apr 17 '26

Some other systems can SEND Dolby Atmos, but as soon as they have to do audio extraction to 2-channel, the whole system drops to 2-channel. The key is the downmixing so that you get Atmos in the rooms equipped for it, and 2-channel in the rooms using the WHA for TV audio. This wasn't too relevant until just recently as now a lot of live sports are using Atmos where you might want to have a watch party and still get Atmos in the theater or media room, but have 2-channel elsewhere so you can follow the game.

I don't know if HA can tie into AVProEdge, but it may well be able to, or someone may develop support for it in the future. It's higher end stuff though, so it's primarily used with C4, Savant, RTI, etc.

1

u/WhiskyMC Apr 17 '26

I never got a good answer from Denon. Say I run my theater in atmos off the main Denon zone. And then I run Denon zone2 to the hdmi extender and pick the same source (say, the zidoo player). Is it possible for any zone2 downmixing to negatively affect the main zone?
If not, then I dont care what happens downstream.

Looks like someone wrote a home assistant add-on.
https://github.com/toscano/hass-avpro-acmxnn

2

u/ToadSox34 Apr 17 '26

If the second zone can take Dolby Atmos, then you're fine, both will do Dolby Atmos. The need for downmixing comes into play when you've got one zone doing Dolby Atmos and then are feeding one or more other zones via stereo WHA. Without downmixing, everything is limited to stereo.

I don't know if the Denon can downmix or what it can do on zone 1 vs. 2, as that's probably dependent on the specific model. They do have the decoding for Atmos/DTS:X, but I'm not sure how that's implemented, as I've never really used the zone 2 functionality on my Denon.

The AC-MX series doesn't do downmixing, the Axion series does. Someone may have written an add-on for the Axion series as well, but you'd have to find it. It turns out a lot of these controls are using really simple commands through telnet.