This post was originally published in August of 2016 on another platform:
An interesting focus paper was recently published by Radio World. The topic is Audio over Internet Protocol (AoIP) and is titled Radio AoIP 2016. Each piece in the focus paper reviews some aspect of the AES67 and AES70 standards. AES is the Audio Engineering Society. The AES has created many standards for the audio industry over the years. AES67 is intended to be an interoperability standard such that if audio is shared between two pieces of equipment over an IP network, and both pieces of equipment use this standard, then the audio should transfer even if the equipment comes from different manufacturers. AES70 is a standard for monitor and control of IP networked audio equipment.
As it turns out, despite what this document encourages, organizations like us at NPR Distribution and public radio stations are not really able to be 100% on the AES67 standard. Why? Because not all the manufacturers of the equipment we use have adopted it. Some that have adopted it have made unique adjustments in the way they deploy the standard in their equipment. They likely take this route to encourage engineers to use their gear and not mix-and-match with other manufacturers (their competitors).
This seems counterproductive to me. Often the members of these standards committees within AES come from the manufacturers themselves. If they are dedicating some of the time (meaning money) of their senior engineers to create these standards then limiting full compatibility in some way would make the time and energy less helpful. Maybe they do it so they can market the fact that they have the specific AES standard available to purchasers. Maybe it's so they can get a look at how their competitors are approaching some of the same topics as they are. In either case it may be a bit of a Potemkin village if in the end only some adopt and others adopt in a slightly non-compliant way.
Some manufacturers claim to be fully compliant and only put their unique spin into it using optional sections of the standard. If that is true then their gear would work (and perhaps does) with other fully compliant equipment. In these cases the vendor can rightfully claim to be offering "enhancements" in their application of the standard. Perhaps they are marketing their gear as AES67 compliant knowing that other manufacturers will not adopt so they can put the blame on the others when it doesn't work. If this perspective is true, then saying gear is compliant is for marketing purposes knowing that a full system is not likely to happen unless an organization like us uses all the components from the single vendor.
It may be that eventually all manufacturers will become compliant and we can move from the older standards we use to the newest. At the same time it may also be that by the time all the manufacturers catch up to AES67 that a newer and better standard will come along, and the cycle would start all over again. You can see why our engineers have their work cut out for them trying to keep us up to the latest standards possible while not always having the full cooperation of the equipment manufacturers. This is just one of the many challenges to our engineers as they are planning what our system will look like during our next major roll-out beginning in FY2018.
Here is the full focus paper:
aoip.pdf
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