Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

Cynthia Wisehart on AES70

Earlier this year, Bruce Olson, chair of the Audio Engineering Society Standards Committee (AESSC) and Jeff Berryman, chair of the OCA Technical Workgroup, announced the ratification and publication of AES70, an open control and monitoring standard for professional audio and AV media network devices. The genesis of the standard was a field-tested spec by the OCA Alliance, a not-for-profit association of industry manufacturers. This has been a five-year-plus project; the standard has reportedly already been implemented on commercially available products from alliance member companies. The membership currently stands at 12 companies including Bosch, Focusrite, d&b audiotechnik, Attero Tech, Atlas Sound, Harman, TC Group, and Yamaha Commercial Audio among others.

This latest accomplishment is part of a larger effort to establish AES interoperability standards for networking transport (AES67), control (AES70) and network directory/discovery (reportedly coming in about 18-20 months). This suite of standards is compatible with IEEE’s AVB/TSN standard, and it also dovetails into the ongoing development of Dante and Ravenna (and CobraNet) bringing the benefits of interoperability and standards to popular proprietary transport platforms.

Combining AES70 system control with AES67 already includes discovery. However, AES70 can be implemented with any media transport mechanism, including analog cable, even before the AES directory/discovery piece is completed.

AES70/OCA enables change and monitoring of all operating parameters of a network device, including the creation and deletion of signal paths, parameter adjustments for signal processing objects, network device firmware updates, and management of access control. It also lets you limit control for simpler “operator” functionality such as level, mute, power on/off and fault indication. It operates on commodity Ethernet networking hardware or via standard 802.11 Wi-Fi.

Technically, AES70 is essentially the same as OCA 1.3, the specifications for which have been available on the OCA Alliance website since October 2014, and which has been used in shipping products. However, through what has been described by the chairs as an unusually smooth development and workgroup process, a few changes have been made. AES70 had it’s public debut at ISE, and you should look for it at InfoComm at booth 7-F221. The OCA Alliance also will be displaying the OCA MicroDemo, a new compact and lightweight reference design that was developed among OCA Alliance member companies. It’s meant to illustrate how OCA works in even the smallest devices, such as wall controllers and other hardware designs where software and hardware resources are limited. By InfoComm we will also know if OCA has completed work on what they describe as a downloadable “certification tool” designed to aid development and greatly simplify the certification process for compliant products.

Featured Articles

Close