04 l February 2014
www.psneurope.com news EUROPE Dante makes an AES67 date
The momentum behind AES67 continues with Audinate’s decision to incorporate the standard into Dante. But what – if anything – does it all mean for AVB, asks David Davies?
IN A development with potentially significant implications for the networking debate, Audinate has confirmed to PSNEurope that it will incorporate AES67 transport in its Dante media networking solution. The official announcement was scheduled to be made on the first day of ISE 2014. Published by the Audio Engineering Society last September, AES67 is the subject of increasing excitement, especially in the integrator community. Designed specifically to ensure that various networked audio components from different companies are able to work in a unified system, AES67 provides interoperability recommendations for professional quality audio networking in the areas of synchronisation, media clock identification, network transport, encoding and streaming, and session description.
Lee Ellison, CEO of
Audinate, posits the accommodation of AES67 as a logical move. Dante already implements a Layer 3 IP-based transport based on UDP (User Datagram Protocol), whilst AES67 implements RTP
supporting the move from Bosch, Focusrite, SSL and Yamaha indicates a healthy level of potential interest in the option, which will be delivered as a firmware update to OEMs in the initial Dante products within 12 months. Niall Feldman is director of
(L-R): Bill Scott, Bosch Communications Systems; Lee Ellison, Audinate; Terry Holton, Yamaha Commercial Audio: AES67 support
(Real-time Transport Protocol). The addition of AES67, therefore, provides a choice of transport protocols within Dante. Moreover, since the existing Dante transport and AES67 both use routable Layer 3 IP protocols, Dante can operate in routed networks, spanning multiple IP subnets, with either protocol. “We had been reaching out to our customers over the last nine months to get a feeling for what they wanted, because at the end of the day the aim from the Audinate perspective is to meet the requests and requirements of our customers,” says Ellison. “One of the things we really
new products at SSL, which launched its first Dante networked product at IBC 2013 and is currently making its debut exhibitor appearance at ISE. “Solid State Logic fully support Audinate’s plan to provide an AES67 option for Dante devices. Interoperability
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outlook for the AVB initiative. To date, all pro-audio AVB projects to reach the market have been geared towards Layer 2 transport, although as Ellison points out it would be possible for AES67 “to allow an AVB Layer 3 solution”. Rick Kreifeldt, chairman/
president of the AVB- supporting AVnu Alliance and vice president of research and innovation at Harman International’s Corporate Technology Group, is emphatic about not regarding AES67 as a rival. “We don’t consider it as a competitor as they reference our technology,” says Kreifeldt, who also doesn’t rule out the notion of future incorporation of the new standard into the AVB specification. “It’s possible,” he allows. “I am sure if the AVnu membership finds it useful to do, we will go do it. [As an organisation] we are very market-based.”
“We had been reaching out to our customers over the last nine months to get a feeling for what they wanted, because at the end of the day the aim from the Audinate perspective is to meet the requests and requirements of our customers”
Lee Ellison, Audinate
liked [about AES67] is that it uses a lot of the same kinds of things that already exist [such as] leveraging the clock synchronisation.”
Although no licensees in the manufacturer community have confirmed specific plans to implement Dante with AES67, the presence in the announcement release of quotes
was a primary decision in SSL adopting Dante for network I/O products and we are pleased the addition of AES67 will add further devices to the hundreds of compatible products already available,” says Feldman. In a broader context, the
groundswell of activity around Layer 3-oriented AES67 can only raise questions about the
Underlining Kreifeldt’s assertion that this is “an extremely busy period” for AVB, the first AVnu-certified AVB product, from Extreme Networks, was also unveiled during ISE 2014 [see page 44].
www.aes.org/publications/standar ds/
search.cfm?docID=96
www.audinate.com www.avnu.org
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