in digital format. One of those recordings was the legendary 1 BASIC FUNDAMENTALS, DEFINITIONS, AND KEY TERMS Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture, performed by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. The recording featured the first-ever digitally recorded live sound effects-digital cannons. Twenty years later, Telarc International released a 6-channel recording of the Tchai- kovsky's 1812 Overture, "...complete with new bells, cannons, caril- lons and choruses." The technical approach was built around 48- kHz sampling and 16-bit quantization using matched microphones and recording channels whereby the sound bits and bytes were captured to magnetic tape, all 48,000 X 16 X 2 = 1,536,000 bits per second. This work would lead standards development by several years, including AES5-1984 r1992, AES Recommended Practice for Professional digital audio, covering preferred sampling frequencies, and AES3-1985 r1992, AES Recommended Practice For Digital Audio Engineering, covering two-channel serial transmission format. Multi-channel sound applications such as multi-language program audio and multi-channel systems require four, five, or more discrete sound channels. Transporting multiple channel sound requires an interface and a specific set of network resources for each discrete sound channel. The aggregate of the individual channels makes up the total payload offered to the network or recording media trans- porting the payload. The output of a microphone, once digitized, is typically fed to an audio console where it is mixed with other microphones and sound sources such as compact discs (CDs), film sound, playback from systems, off-site remote locations, and even test signal generators. These audio consoles vary in complexity in terms of the number of input and output channels, and functional capabilities achievable through manual and software controlled mixing, equalization, delay, synchronization echo, and others. Audio console output fed to a recording or transmission channel is typically a standard inter- face and signal