Legacy technology · 1992

AGMnet

Remote control and real-time diagnosis for audio installations

Long before “networked audio” became an everyday phrase, AGM was treating amplifiers, processors and diagnostics as one supervised system.

DocumentedStudio Sound · May 1992
Platformexpandable to 16 channels
Controlremote installation control
Monitoringreal-time system diagnosis

The idea

Do not make the engineer walk around the building to find out what the system is doing.

A 1992 Studio Sound product report described AGM’s Digital Audio Processing Platform as expandable to sixteen channels and integrated with AGM Surround Sound systems. More unusually, it described “The AGM Network” as providing full remote control of installations fitted with AGM proprietary control cards and real-time system diagnosis.

That makes AGMnet more than a control panel with a long cable. The documented intention was supervisory: operate equipment remotely, see whether it was behaving correctly and diagnose a complex installation as a system.

A separate development from SAnet

The distinction is historically important. Stage Accompany’s SAnet was used with the AGM Ambisonic system at Cairo’s. AGMnet was AGM’s own later remote-control and diagnostic system. The two should not be conflated.

C-Audio controller card

Anthony Morris’s first-hand project record states that Cambridge amplifier manufacturer C-Audio commissioned the first controller card that connected its amplifiers directly to AGMnet, and that the capability was demonstrated at professional-audio exhibitions. C-Audio’s existence and later sale to Harman are independently documented; the specific AGM commission remains founder-record provenance pending recovery of the original agreement or exhibition material.

A recurring AGM pattern

Sound, software, control and data were treated as one problem.

The same approach reappears in the Touchdown “Virtual Room”, the MR1 recording chain and later server-based encoding systems.

Next: Touchdown →