[sdiy] Analog crossbars and backplanes

[cheater00 .]

On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 3:50 PM, Rainer Buchty <rainer at buchty.net> wrote:
> I think that an programmable analog crossbar is the better
> solution in your case. Saves you all the hassles of dealing with high-speed
> buses and you don't even need tons of ADC/DAC. Plus, scalability is rather
> easy to achieve.

Dunno. Is it?

Let's have a 16-voice modular, with a module that has 6 connections.
Don't you think this is a mite huge? That's 96 connections per module.
A reasonably sized modular will have on the order of 100-200 signal
sources and destinations. So you'd need 16 completely separate analog
systems that can each manage 100 inputs and outputs and route between
them. Are there any analog crossbar solutions that do anything on this
order of magnitude?
Then, each connection to the main hub must have additional line
drivers, because we're talking about distances on the order of a meter
or two.

If you find something nice, let me know, but the last time we've
visited this topic on the list, there wasn't anything affordable or
interesting.

D.