Tascam has announced its upcoming SB-16D 16-in/16-out Dante-enabled stage box, expected to ship in the second quarter of 2023. Designed to integrate with the company’s emerging Sonicview digital recording and mixing console line, the SB-16D can be controlled by the desks or the Tascam IO Control app.
Intended for use in live and recording settings, as well as broadcast and installations, the SB-16D can be used as a floor stage box or be rack-mounted, and multiple stage boxes can be used simultaneously in a Dante network. The stage box provides 16 XLR mic/line inputs and 16 XLR line outputs on its own, but if more I/O capacity is required, multiple SB-16D stage boxes can be networked. Each input channel has +48V phantom power and a SIG OL LED for input-level monitoring. Additionally, each line output is equipped with SIG OL LEDs.
Two Dante ports equipped with etherCON-compatible Dante connectors enable redundant streams with robust connections. A DC power input is provided that allows a redundant power supply (not included).
As available in the Tascam Sonicview recording mixers, each SB-16D microphone input feeds a Tascam Class 1 HDIA (High-Definition Instrumentation Architecture) mic preamp, said to be extremely quiet, achieving a -128 dBu EIN. The mic inputs can accept up to +32 dBu signals. The stage box uses 32-bit analog-to-digital converters and a 96 kHz sampling frequency.
When a SB-16D stage box is connected to a Tascam Sonicview 16XP or 24XP recording mixer, microphone gain can be remotely controlled from the mixing console, and all of its I/O comes up on the Tascam Sonicview VIEW touch screens. In addition, the SB-16D is equipped with 8-in/8-out GPIOs, which expand to 16-in/16-out GPIOs when connected to a Tascam Sonicview recording mixer, facilitating parallel control.
