The XTI board is designed for transparent forwarding of external serial data of the following formats over the NEXUS system, and makes all the necessary interface standards. A virtual cable through the NEXUS audio network is configured for free routing of external serial data on the system. The data is exchanged between two or more XTI boards and remains unchanged. I.e. the data is neither edited nor evaluated or otherwise modified. In addition, the XTI serves as an interface for forwarding serial data from other boards (e.g. metadata from the XDED and XDEE Dolby boards or an XHDI board) to external devices. The board can also distribute timecode and MIDI on the system, and make them available to other boards. The XTI board supports four duplex channels with independently configurable data formats. Each channel is galvanically isolated from both the NEXUS and other channels. Freely configurable routing between different outputs makes level conversion possible (for example, for routing an RS?232 input signal to an RS?422 output). For higher data rates the software offers the option of doubling the transmission bandwidth. In this mode, twice the NEXUS bandwidth is allocated to each channel, thus doubling the data rate. Each of the four electronically fused serial ports can be switched on or off independently. Two XTI versions are available: a 4-HP front panel with two serial ports, or an 8-HP version providing the maximum of four ports.