The digital networks arms race

The universe of networked audio is its own Tower of Babel, which is appropriate considering that it’s also one of the more globally indigenous product categories in pro audio. Rather than a few category leaders engendering lots of ‘me too’ activity, contenders for the increasingly in-demand task of putting all of a venue’s audio onto a single network are coming from around the world. The Babel part is made all the more appropriate since most of them can’t talk to each other.

Every technology category has an origin story and digital audio networking has its own. CobraNet, developed by Peak Audio in the mid-1990s, was the first successful digital audio networking protocol. It also stood a chance at becoming an industry networking standard. But while its acceptance by the professional audio industry was rapid, it wasn’t fast enough to outpace a slew of other companies who thought they stood an equal chance of developing a widely accepted digital audio networking solution themselves.

By the turn of the current century there were nearly a dozen proprietary networking protocols on the market, each vying for broad acceptance by various sectors of pro audio, from live sound to installed sound to sports venues and temporary installs. But the productisation of digital audio networking arrived at a time when pro audio had seen consolidation create corporate entities with a high degree of vertical integration. These multifaceted companies could make their mixers, loudspeakers, DSP and other product lines more specifically compatible with their particular protocol, which drove the nascent evolution of audio networking quickly onto a proprietary track.

However, the diversity of protocols fulfils the same kind of needs that diversity in the biosphere does. ‘They all have their strengths and weaknesses,’ observes John McMahon, currently executive director of digital products at Meyer Sound and who when at LCS Audio (which was acquired by Meyer in 2005) was one of the first to employ CobraNet. ‘Some work very well for low latency on dedicated networks, others have higher latency but use lower bandwidth, which works well for existing IT infrastructure.’

Digital audio networks have come from all points on the globe, from Europe to Australia, and the US pro audio market has become, if not a germinating platform for new network propositions, then certainly a proving ground for them.

Remi Oudinot at Digigram, in France, which markets its EtherSound network solution, says the US market is the ultimate validation for any network system. However, he points out that ‘We have noticed that US customers only embrace proven technology, where European customers are more willing to test avant-garde approaches. For the US, it has to work, no beta-test allowed. Period. And the market has high expectations in terms of proximity – customers expect local distributors and responsive support. For European manufacturers, this has to be taken into account from the very beginning.’

In fact, precisely because the market is so relatively new and solutions coming to market use substantially different approaches, the sales and support infrastructure has become as critical as feature sets and functionality in the new digital network arms race. ‘There is no standard today,’ says Oudinot. ‘What counts is the number of vendors, manufacturers and existing, proven, working installations.’

Ervin Grinberg, senior marketing manager for Audinate, concurs. ‘The US market is very important,’ he says. ‘Audinate was founded in Australia, but our initial focus was the US and Europe, where we have seen adoption of OEM licensees of our Dante media networking technology, as well as in Europe and Asia. The US and Europe represent our largest tow markets, but we have a growing number of customers in Japan, Korea, and China.’

The US market may be finicky, but manufacturers appreciate that it’s a fast-moving mechanism offering quick feedback, as well as a large array of market sectors that are allowing what has become a substantial number of market players to move without too much conflict. Mr Grinberg says that digital networking in the install market is a no-brainer: ‘Connections become logical connections and do not require point-to-point connections,’ he explains, adding that the Dante network emphasises its sub-millisecond latency to address the US touring market, which – at least until this year – has been the music industry’s main revenue driver.

That said, Europe remains a strong market for the technology, making up for what it might lack in breadth with a willingness to take risks. ‘We see digital audio networking being now widely adopted, be it in Asia, the US or Europe,’ says Digigram’s Mr Oudinot. ‘But it all started with Europe, and the biggest demand for us remains from Europe. For some reason – perhaps increased competition among entertainment or art venues – going with digital audio networking there is a way to step ahead of the crowd.’ Mr Oudinot adds that EtherSound has seen rapid adoption in theatres and in live sound, but that’s been less so for fixed installations. But the US has a massive and complex house of worship installed base that often uses digital audio technology to differentiate mega-churches from one another, something that Mr Oudinot observes he’s now also seeing in Asia. ‘In Asia and the US, the house of worship market is driving the demand for proven, high-end systems,’ he says.

Mr Grinberg concurs with that assessment. ‘The house of worship market in the US is more advanced with digital networking than other markets as the sound systems become more sophisticated,’ he says. ‘Since the signals are digital, it makes sense to keep it digital throughout the distribution system.’

Then there’s Ethernet Audio/Video Bridging (AVB), which many believe gives the networked audio sector what it ultimately needs: an IT-level traffic policeman. Ethernet protocols currently on the market can’t transfer low-latency, properly synchronised, high-quality media across a local area network (LAN) without other data traffic interfering with the media streams. Ethernet AVB, developed by the IEEE AVB 802.1 AVB Task Group, which was comprised of engineers from major consumer and professional audio manufacturers, does just that by providing three major enhancements for 802-based networks: precise timing to support low-jitter media clocks and accurate synchronisation of multiple streams, a simple reservation protocol that allows endpoint devices to reserve the bandwidth in a path to guarantee quality of service (QoS) for audio/video streams, and queuing and forwarding rules that ensure that A/V streams will pass through the network within the delay specified. The bottom line: Ethernet AVB fast-tracks designated audio data streams into a higher-priority class of packet that are expedited ahead of standard, ‘best-effort’ data traffic. On a purely technical level, AVB makes the network aware of the fact that audio and video are fundamentally different from other data.

Ethernet AVB has the potential to become a standard for several reasons. For starters, huge consumer audio players, such as Apple and Samsung, which will drive much broader demand for AVB-compliant products, back the protocol. Samsung, Intel, Cisco Systems and other companies have formed the AVnu Alliance, a trade group to promote the protocol, and it’s structured in a way that encourages development by numerous third parties that extend beyond the install market and into consumer and automotive sectors.

Rick Kreifeldt, vice president and systems architect at Harman, which has been a staunch AVB backer, says it’s the protocol’s open standards and scalability that will give it the kind of price points needed to bring networking to the vast and expanding pool of smaller A/V projects. ‘Even CobraNet, which has the greatest reach of all of the systems, is still relatively costly and complex and not really scaled for much of the work in the A/V market today,’ he observes. ‘Without scalability to that degree you don’t get the kinds of economies of scale that can really drive networking.’

AVB, on the other hand, he says, is structured in a way that encourages development by numerous third parties that extend beyond the install market. In fact, says Mr Kreifeldt, proprietary audio networks might never achieve the kind of scale that would let prices drop from the many thousands to the few hundreds needed to achieve a mass market. ‘As projects get smaller, that’s where networking needs to go, and AVB can get it there.’

And that’s the real beauty of the US market as a proving ground, especially for a diverse technology proposition like digital audio networking: say what you will about free markets, but their real beauty lies in their unvarnished honesty.