The Audio Engineering Society (AES) recently held a successful interoperability testing event, in cooperation of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), of its AES67-2013 standard at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) in Munich, Germany.
The event was held to demonstrate the functional compatibility of a number of different implementations of the AES67 standard for high-performance streaming audio over IP networks across a varied range of platforms and products. This standard specifically provides comprehensive interoperability recommendations in the areas of synchronization, media clock identification, network transport, encoding and streaming, session description and connection management.
The event, put on by the AES Standards Committee (AESSC), offered a chance for manufacturers to test and experiment with the AES67 networking standard protocols in a controlled environment, overseen by AESSC members. Over the three-day event, 16 different networked-audio products with AES67-specific extensions were tested, with participating brands, including ALC NetworX, Archwave, Axia Audio, Digigram, DirectOut, Georg Neumann, Lawo, Merging Technologies, SOUND4 and Telos Systems.
PlugFest provided a commercially-neutral context for engineers from these manufacturers to connect their equipment to that of other developers and to confirm, through testing, that signals are transmitted and received correctly according to the standard, in the practical interests of all participants.
“We’re very pleased with the recent success of our ‘PlugFest’ event in Munich last month, as we continue to gather further research in interoperability for the implementation of AES67,” states Bruce Olson, chair of the AES Standards Committee. “With the participation of leading manufacturers, this hands-on event was able to clearly and reliably demonstrate the AES67 audio networking standard in a controlled environment across a number of different platforms.
“The AES Standards Committee continues to provide the most rigorous testing and development within the professional audio community, and these events help to strengthen our mission to standardize and educate our latest developments for audio professionals worldwide.”
Go here for further information on the AES67-2013 standard, click here, or visit the AES Standards page here.
The full report on the event, titled “AES-R12-2014, Report on AES67 interoperability PlugFest, Munich 2014” is also available at the AES website here.