The Media Networking Alliance (MNA), the professional AV industry alliance established to promote awareness and uptake of AES67, will exhibit at the 139th AES International Convention in New York. The alliance will feature a live demonstration of audio networking interoperability, featuring 22 currently available networked-audio devices from different manufacturers employing various audio network platforms.
Kevin Gross
- AES67-specific extensions to the different network platforms provide for the common interchange of digital audio between them. In the instance of the demo, digital audio signals will be interoperable between devices employing Dante, Livewire, Q-LAN and Ravenna. A total of 22 devices, from ALC NetworX, Archwave AG, Axia Audio, Digigram, DirectOut, Focusrite, Genelec, Lawo, Merging Technologies, QSC, Solid State Logic, Telos Systems Inc., and Yamaha, are connected to a simple network with a single Ethernet switch.
AES67 supports both unicast (one-to-one) and multicast (one-to-many) audio transmission, although the demo will be primarily a multicast demonstration, along the lines of the PlugFest testing carried out by the AES in cooperation with the European Broadcast Union (EBU) at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) in Munich, Germany, last year.
“Although pairs of manufacturers have independently verified interoperability, and large-scale, multi-manufacturer testing was done a year ago at the PlugFest in Munich, this will be the first significant public demonstration of AES67 interoperability," said Kevin Gross, MNA, technical working group chairman. "It’s powerful to see AES67 fulfilling its promise making network audio connections between devices and protocols that were formerly incompatible.
“In addition to audio transport, we will be demonstrating some of the manufacturer-specific discovery, control, and monitoring functions that augment AES67 audio interoperability and coexist on the same network.”
AES67 enables high-performance audio-over-IP streaming interoperability between the various currently available IP-based audio networking platforms. AES67 operates over standard layer 3 Ethernet networks and is routable and fully scalable, like any common modern IT network. As a rule of thumb, any network infrastructure capable of handling VoIP should be able to handle AES67.
