AES, EBU Work on New Standard

[VASI]

AES Standards Committee Chair, Bruce Olson, reports an important step forward in the development of Audio over IP in broadcasting: The Audio Engineering Society and the EBU have announced a collaboration with the goal of producing a new common packet-based network standard for linear PCM audio. This liaison is officially entitled "Next generation AES/EBU Interface Based On IP Technology."

These two organizations have a history of fruitful collaboration. First published in 1985, the AES3 standard, also known as the AES/EBU interface, is a fundamental standard for the transport of digital audio signals between professional devices. The new liaison is a continuation of this work, which will benefit the whole professional audio industry.

The primary AES/EBU focus is on audio interoperability over high-performance IP networks, with the further goal of interoperability with the EBU's common framework for audio contribution over IP, ACIP. The initiative is partially inspired by the ACIP project group's interoperability recommendations for audio over wide-area IP networks. Through the ACIP2 group, chaired by the IRT’s Sonja Langhans, the EBU represents the technical interests of a key user group for the new standard, the public broadcasters of Europe.

Within the AES, the work has already started, with the project known as AES-X192. The group is chaired by Kevin Gross. A recently published draft is now being discussed among project participants, including some ACIP2 members.

New project participants are welcome. EBU Members or manufacturers working in the broadcast domain can start by joining the ACIP2 project group. Others can directly contact AES task group SC-02-12-H, which is open to any directly and materially affected individuals.

It should also be noted that the 133rd AES Convention, scheduled for Oct. 26 – 29 at SF’s Moscone Center will introduced a dedicated Networked Audio track chaired by noted engineer and long-time AES member, Tim Shuttleworth. The six workshops and tutorials developed for this event will feature participants including Sonja Langhans and Kevin Gross. They will address many of the workflow issues and related concerns currently acting as ‘stumbling blocks’ in the path of interoperability.

www.x192.org

via AES