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Networked Audio
The Interconnectedness Of All Things
Paul Mac examines the standards of digital audio networking…
Current digital audio networks and point-to-point technologies are many and varied. The hunt for a single standard goes on, but it's unlikely to happen any time soon given the variety of technical strategies and requirements. Indeed, the proliferation of standards and protocols is mostly evolutionary rather than divisive and there are some needs that are just not compatible.
There are three main categories of standard out there - commercial, open, and propriety. Dante is an audio over IP implementation based on a collection of industry standards offered to manufacturers as a solution for interoperability. No one has to re-invent the wheel, and the more manufacturers get involved, the more attractive it is as a common standard.
Open standards, such as AVB, AES67, MADI (AES10), and so on specify the requirements, but leave it largely up to the
community to develop practical implementations. The advantage of open standards is that, in theory, no one 'owns' it, so there is no commercial hold over the market.
Proprietary standards are just that: mostly manufacturer- developed protocols that are specific to a product or group of products. There is a grey area here as often alliances are formed that enable sharing of these protocols, or a manufacturer claims its standard is 'open' but puts up commercial barriers to uptake. One excellent reason for a proprietary standard to exist is so a manufacturer can offer a guaranteed quality of service with high channel counts, such as with Calrec's Hydra 2 or Studer's A Link... or so that cross-brand co-ordinated development can move forward faster and enable combined functionality such as with Harman's HiQNet.
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