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English
Basic Concepts of mLAN
“mLAN” is a digital network designed for musical applications. It uses and extends the industry
standard “IEEE (I triple E) 1394” high performance serial bus.
In a musical environment without mLAN, dozens of various types of cables such as audio cables,
phone cables, and MIDI cables are required, with different types of cable for each device and
application. Also, the MIDI and audio signal flow is determined by the way in which cables are
connected, meaning that cables must be reconnected if you wish to reconfigure the system.
For example if you have purchased a new synthesizer, you will need two MIDI cables plus two
phone cables in the case of a stereo output instrument (or in some cases even more if the instru-
ment has more than two audio outputs). When making connections, attention must also be paid
to the input/output direction of each jack, the left/right channel, and in some cases, an under-
standing of impedance is also required.
As systems become larger, such factors produce more complexity and expense. Incorrect connec-
tions and other problems can increase. The time required to troubleshoot mistakes and problems
also increases, resulting in wasted time. More than one reader has doubtless had the frustrating
experience of tracing through an intricate web of cables one by one, just to track down a single
faulty contact in one cable.
mLAN provides a dramatic simplification by allowing all such connections to be combined into a
single IEEE 1394 compatible cable, and also making possible the construction of far more power-
ful systems.
In addition, the flow of MIDI and audio signals between mLAN devices can be freely changed
without actually reconnecting any cables, and such configurations can be recorded as well.
Theoretically, the IEEE 1394 bus that mLAN uses is capable of transmitting over one hundred
channels of CD-quality digital audio data (equivalent to more than 256 MIDI cables) over a single
cable at one time.
Details will be given later, but if the system contains sixteen or fewer nodes (devices in the net-
work), a system can be constructed simply by connecting devices consecutively. No special
knowledge is required. Currently, a system can consist of a maximum of 63 devices, but in the
future larger systems of up to 63 x 1023 devices can be constructed by observing certain simple
rules.
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