Focusrite RedNet 5
A bridge box that lets a Pro Tools HD rig drink from the Dante firehose — thirty-two channels at a time, six of them stacked if you dare.
Overview
The RedNet 5 solves one specific, expensive problem: getting audio off a Dante network and into a Pro Tools|HD system without running a console's worth of copper through the wall. Focusrite built it as a 32-channel RedNet-to-Pro Tools HDX bridge. Stack the maximum of six units and you get up to 192 channels at up to 96 kHz. Or you can trade sample rate for channel count and run up to 96 channels at 192 kHz, which is the Pro Tools ceiling. Mix (November 2013, p.44) laid out the same math, noting the six-unit maximum and confirming the RedNet 5 is interoperable with other Pro Tools interfaces while keeping latency extremely low.
The connectivity shows who this was for. There's a mini-DigiLink connector and an expansion slot, plus word clock I/O, Slave Loop I/O, and the Ethernet port that ties it to the RedNet network. Focusrite's own catalog copy from the era called it a "32 I/O HD Bridge" that "adds RedNet to your Pro Tools HD system," and the company said compatibility extended across Pro Tools Native, HD, and HD (TDM). Street price at launch was around $1,500, which next to an HD rig is almost an afterthought.
RedNet runs on Dante, the audio-over-IP architecture. The RedNet 5 wasn't sold as a standalone box. It was the way in for Pro Tools users joining a network that already included Focusrite's own RedNet 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and PCIe card, each handling a different slice of the analog and digital I/O. The same review pointed out that a RedNet system could be stood up with little more than AC power and Cat 6 cable, which beats patch bays and snake runs.
Pro Sound (October 2013, p.13) reported that Southwestern College in San Diego, through professor Jay Henry, bought two RedNet 5 HD interfaces for its Pro Tools|HD systems, alongside three RedNet 2 units for the program's main recording and tracking rooms. The same publication's later advertising (and Mix's, in February 2014) leaned hard on Chris Lord-Alge's endorsement. The five-time Grammy winner called RedNet the sound he liked "in a format I can use." That quote is advertising copy, not an independent measurement, and the RedNet 5's job was never to color the sound. It was to move channels.
The caveats are the ones that come with any bridge built for a proprietary host format. The RedNet 5 is a Pro Tools HDX/HD Native/HD TDM device first and foremost. It's only useful if you own that host hardware, and the mini-DigiLink connection ties it to a specific era of Avid architecture. Focusrite's own documentation described the broader RedNet line as designed for "any place where high fidelity digital audio is split, processed, distributed and delivered," and the RedNet 5 is the piece aimed at the Pro Tools room. If the host system is gone, the bridge is a well-built door with no house behind it.