mLAN, short for Music Local Area Network, is a protocol for synchronized transmission and management of multi-channel digital audio, video, control signals and multi-port MIDI over a network. It exploits several features of the IEEE 1394 standard, also known as FireWire, upon which it is based, to afford isochronous

Isochronous

Isochronous : From Greek iso, equal + chronos, time. It literally means regularly, or at equal time intervals. In general English language, it refers to something that occurs at a regular interval, of the same duration; as opposed to synchronous which refers to more than one thing happening at the...

 transfer and intelligent connection management. Interconnects are made with standard IEEE 1394 cables. With the proper software, a digital audio workstation

Digital audio workstation

A digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed solely or primarily for recording, editing and playing back digital audio. DAWs were originally tape-less, microprocessor-based systems such as the Synclavier and Fairlight CMI...

 may interact with mLAN-compliant hardware via any OHCI

OHCI

A host controller interface is a register-level interface that enables a host controller for USB or FireWire hardware to communicate with a host controller driver in software...

-compliant FireWire port.

The protocol was originally developed by Yamaha Corporation, and publicly introduced in January 2000. It is now available under a royalty-free license to anyone interested in utilizing the technology. As of 2005, over 100 manufacturers are part of the mLAN Alliance.

The transport layers of mLAN have been standardized as IEC 61883

IEC 61883

IEC 61883 is a 1998 digital interface that is used by IEEE 1394 devices for audio and video equipment. The standard for these devices is maintained by the International Electrotechnical Commission....

.

Versions

Version 1 operates on the S200 type connection, Version 2 on the S400 type. The latter version supports synchronized streaming of digital audio at up to 24 bit word length and 192 kHz sample rate, MIDI and wordclock at a bitrate

Bitrate

In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....

 up to 400 Megabits per second.

Supporting products

• Yamaha Motif
  Yamaha Motif
  The Yamaha Motif is a series of music workstations, first released by Yamaha Corporation in August 2001. Other workstations in the same class are the Korg Triton, Roland Fantom-G and Alesis Fusion.-Motif Classic:...
  
  , Yamaha Motif ES, Yamaha S90 ES, Yamaha Motif XS

Other important mLAN devices include Yamaha 01X digital mixing hub and Yamaha i88x audio/MIDI interface.

Caveats and Product End

mLAN, being a Firewire bus protocol of its own, consumed an entire Firewire bus' bandwidth, making the mixing of mLAN and non-mLAN devices on the same Firewire bus impossible. For example, it was not possible to use hard drives, optical drives or other sound devices on the same Firewire bus when mLAN Manager software was running. It effectively took over the bus with a proprietary management system that was incompatible with standard Firewire bus devices.

As of early 2008, mLAN appeared to have reached the end of its product life. The third party developers previously mentioned have since discontinued or retracted their mLAN supporting products from the market as has Yamaha itself. Yamaha has had no indication of new releases of mLAN hardware or updates to the software in several years and mention of mLAN is notably absent from new product announcements and driver updates over the last few years.

External links

• mLAN Central
• 01xray
• Save Mlan on the Mac hosted by Chrismcc