MNA Continues Its Work At 141st AES Convention

At the 141st AES Convention in Los Angeles earlier this month, the Media Networking Alliance (MNA) continued to promote the AES67 AoIP interoperability standard.

The alliance's presence and activities at the convention signalled the growing importance of 'the AES' as a location for MNA member convergence and education. The increased number of member companies exhibiting on the show floor was also supported with a predominance of AES67-themed Networked Audio Sessions within the AES Technical Program.

The MNA's booth afforded a central information point, displaying booth details for the 11 exhibiting member companies – Archwave, Cymatic Audio, Focusrite, Lawo, DirectOut, Genelec, Merging Technologies, Riedel Communications, Shure, Solid State Logic, and Yamaha – including AES67 interoperability demonstrations by Archwave, DirectOut, Merging Technologies and Focusrite. Also being shown was a video overview of AES67 by MNA member AoIP networking specialists Will Hoult and Andreas Hildebrand. This video can be viewed below.



AES67 enables the common interchange of digital media between different AoIP networking platforms. Running on modern commodity IT network infrastructure and switches, it is routable and fully scalable, and can operate in parallel with existing network services.

At the convention, a range of practical issues and questions surrounding the implementation of AES67 were addressed in over half of the Networked Audio Sessions, in the AES Technical Program. Six AES67 themed sessions were presented by MNA members. Subjects included Rolling out AES67 into Real-World Applications, AES and the Audio Industry, AES67 Discovery,AES67 Interoperability Testing – The Plugfest Report and AES70 as a Companion Control Protocol to AES67 Audio Transport.

In a development related to the last of these, the OCA Alliance, which promotes the AES70 open network control and monitoring standard, demonstrated an integrated technology platform on its booth, utilizing AES67 for audio transport, and AES70 (OCA) for discovery, connection management and device control. The platform was jointly developed by Archwave and Bosch Communications, member companies of both the OCA Alliance and the MNA.

Martin Barbour, co-chair of the MNA Marketing Working Group, said: "AES67 is gaining increasing traction with manufacturers of network audio devices, for all types of live event, fixed installation and broadcast applications, and the AES Convention has become a major event for convergence, collaboration and education among MNA members; something reflected strongly in the increasing number of Technical Sessions and members company exhibitors.

"The activities of our members are key in educating the industry at large as to the benefits of and implementation of AES67, as we share the knowledge, research and experience, that drives the uptake of the standard. Through everyone's hard work and dedication, AES67 has acquired prominence in the movement toward AoIP standardization and interoperability, based on common open standards."

medianetworkingalliance.com

(JP)