Installation Guide AX Center
Doc no. AXCNTR-8001-A-4
Rev. date 221023
Page 6 of 19
Before you start
Place your AX Center on a hard and dry surface or mount it into a 19” rack and leave plenty of room for
ventilation.
In order to meet the EMC requirements of directives EN 55032 and FCC 47 CFR part 15, and in order to obtain
the highest performance of the AX Center, you must use good quality and correctly shielded cables for all
external connections when installing AX Center. For the power connection, a normal unshielded power cable
with a proper protective earth conductor can be used.
Make sure that your sound system is at a safe volume level.
Mechanical installation and low fan noise
AX Center is fitted with two very quiet fans to ensure optimum operating temperature. Under normal operating
conditions and correct installation, the fans are not audible in the studio environment. The fans are temperature-
controlled, i.e. the rotation speed, and thereby noise, is dependent of the temperature inside AX Center.
The optimal air flow is through the ventilation openings in the front panel to the rear of the unit. When the unit
is installed, considerations have to be made to ensure proper air circulation for the air leaving the rear of the
unit. The speed of the low noise fan will be increased automatically to keep the internal temperature low if there
is insufficient airflow. If the internal temperature exceeds 60ºC / 140ºF a temperature alarm will appear in the
DADman software and is also indicated by the red error LED on the front panel.
Network configuration
AX Center is equipped with two GigaBit Ethernet connectors, and internally it has an Ethernet switch, a controller
part and a part for the IP Audio option powered by Dante™. The network connectors can operate as two
“parallel” connectors for the internal switch, or as dual connectors for redundant IP audio operation. In this case,
controlling the unit is done via Net port 1.
AX Center has two to three different IP addresses: One for the unit control via DADman and one or two for the IP
audio in single or redundant mode respectively. The network configuration is managed separately for the
controlling interface and the IP audio interface and can have a different configuration from the controlling
interface. The controlling interface is used for controlling AX Center from DADman and the IP audio interface is
used for interfacing Dante IP audio on a network.
The factory default setting of the IP address of the controller port of the AX Center is 10.0.7.20. This IP address
can be changed manually via DADman, or it can be set to be automatically assigned by a DHCP server/router on
the network.
Control software installation
Computer recommendation
The DADman control program operates on any Windows or MacOS based computer and is
frequently maintained for compliance with the latest OS versions
.
Program installation
This section will take you through the installation procedure for the DADman computer control program.
AX Center is controlled from a PC or MAC via the Thunderbolt 3 connection or by a network connection. The
PC/MAC and AX Center units must be connected on the same subnet.
For control via Thunderbolt 3, the DAD Thunderbolt 3 driver has to be installed.
