11 ms·

AES67 resources – Audio over IP protocol

60 points by phlhar 6y ago

bawolff 6y ago
What an unfortunate acronym
- tomn 6y ago
  AES? If so, the Audio Engineering Society has existed for a lot longer than the Advanced Encryption Standard.
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    Here are more details in case anyone is wondering. The Audio Engineer Society has been around since 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Engineering_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Engineering_Society). It released the AES/EBU standard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES3) for digital audio I/O in 1985, and AES/EBU is still used on some pro audio equipment. So in a digital audio context, "AES" is already familiar.
- jlokier 6y ago
  I work with both AES and AES, and I hadn't even noticed.
- userbinator 6y ago
  I thought it was related to encryption for VoLTE.
jand 6y ago
This sounds like fun tech. But isn't this dead before it really lifts off? Intel 1588 is not supported by every customer-NIC, and far from supported by most switches and such. So if i have to build a "special" hardware environment anyway, why use AES67 and not some other proprietary solution without IP which may (? or may not) deliver better latency and jitter? Last time i checked (which is a while back), the same support-argument would apply to multicast. Am i missing the point here? Please enlighten me. Thank you!
- Zenst 6y ago
  I had a look at 1588 and was a rabbit hole of paywalls - latest draft seems to be https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1588-2019.html https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1588-2019.html Why is a standards group paywalled!
  - jand 6y ago
    I once made the shocking discovery, that most ISO and IEEE documents can be found on chinese PDF dump sites. Since this is obviously against all copyright laws, i would recommend to explicitly exclude such domains from your google search. Just to be safe.
  - __d 6y ago
    Many standards groups require payment for their published standards: the ISO and most national standards bodies (ANSI, etc) are maybe the most prominent examples. This is their business model. You pay for access to the standards documents, and that money funds the development and maintenance process. It's supported by governments requiring adherence to these standards, so implementors are obliged to purchase them. Gratis access to standards is a newer model which relies on a different funding stream. The IETF is one such example.
  - lukeh 6y ago
    You can also read the linuxptp code, it's beautifully written.
  - jimmySixDOF 6y ago
    Yes almost anything to do with Industrial Ethernet type standards are all over the place. 1588 PTP mixes with IETF TICTOC workgroup output. Synchronous data also gets used in Psuedowire backhaul for low level circuit emulation signaling like from SCADA or GSM towers etc. And that's without going into IECxxxxx's for powerplant comms. Certifiable Precision Timeing over anything is not trivial.
- jcrawfordor 6y ago
  While this can't be dropped into a lot of existing networks, that doesn't really eliminate the advantages of IP. This might be best explained by analogy: VoIP. Various issues including security model, DHCP-based provisioning, and QoS mean that corporate VoIP phones are typically deployed on a specially prepared network using a dedicated VLAN. While various VoIP vendors claim that you can just drop their solution on your existing network and have it work, this rarely pans out, and it's very common for introduction of VoIP to involve upgrades to network appliances and possibly architectural changes. It might also be important context that prior to the adoption of VoIP most corporate environments were already using a proprietary digital telephone system such as Nortel Meridian, so it's not even a matter of upgrade from analog to digital. Rather, the IP-based network, even with special requirements, is more flexible (due to the large set of routing, switching, etc protocols available for IP) and less costly to maintain (due to common skillset and equipment with computer networks). Even better, while there may be a new network investment required to switch to VoIP, that investment is "dual purpose" and the new network equipment will also serve your computers. I'm not an expert in this field, my experience being limited to some work with Dante equipment years ago---VoIP is more my wheelhouse. But I think the situation is very similar here. Adopters of live audio over IP will almost certainly need to invest in new network equipment and possibly rearchitect their existing network. VLAN segregation and special QoS policy will presumably be the norm. But choice of vendors and common skillset, if nothing else, will make the IP network less costly to maintain. There's a wide variety of technology available for moving IP around in interesting situations, fiber is popular in large theater contexts because of a perceived improvement in reliability over long runs (probably less significant in the days of GbE but I haven't been involved in this kind of thing in a while). Further, with sufficient precautions in place the network can be dual-use and can also serve purposes like administrative networks and even front-of-house wifi. Protocols like Dante are already being widely adopted, and compatibility can be a big headache, so I think a uniform standard for this kind of thing will be very popular.
microcolonel 6y ago
Remembered this a few days ago when watching the recent Wintergatan video where buddy there hooks up this massive multicore with a bunch of preamps to the Marble Machine X, and I'm just there thinking “It sure is satisfying to attach and click in a 28-channel multicore cable, but why not use AES67 (or AES50 for that matter)?”. Nice thing about AES67 is that you can also, in theory, run the preamps and ADCs off PoE.
- zlsa 6y ago
  I think it's because they want to keep the signal analog as long as possible as a fundamental tenet of the machine.
j_spencer 6y ago
I work in a lot of live sound settings and it's common to see Dante[1] cards coming with a lot of audio consoles these days. It's a proprietary protocol (with support for 1024 channels at 32-bit / 192kHz over a single link); add-in cards for consoles can be quite expensive. A lot of the time, we're needing to connect devices to Dante through a Dante interface (which can be expensive) or via a Dante Virtual Soundcard. It will be interesting to see AES67 appearing more in consoles, especially lower end consoles. Hopefully this will open up Audio over IP to more audio professionals without resorting to proprietary protocols which can make it hard to connect systems from various vendors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking)
lukeh 6y ago
I started working on an AVB to AES67 gateway, still a work in progress (back to day job now), but code is here – https://github.com/PADL/OpenAvnu/blob/lukeh/avb/README.AES67.md https://github.com/PADL/OpenAvnu/blob/lukeh/avb/README.AES67...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

60 points by phlhar 6y ago

bawolff 6y ago

What an unfortunate acronym

tomn 6y ago
AES? If so, the Audio Engineering Society has existed for a lot longer than the Advanced Encryption Standard.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  Here are more details in case anyone is wondering. The Audio Engineer Society has been around since 1948 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Engineering_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Engineering_Society). It released the AES/EBU standard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES3) for digital audio I/O in 1985, and AES/EBU is still used on some pro audio equipment. So in a digital audio context, "AES" is already familiar.
jlokier 6y ago
I work with both AES and AES, and I hadn't even noticed.
userbinator 6y ago
I thought it was related to encryption for VoLTE.

jand 6y ago

This sounds like fun tech. But isn't this dead before it really lifts off? Intel 1588 is not supported by every customer-NIC, and far from supported by most switches and such. So if i have to build a "special" hardware environment anyway, why use AES67 and not some other proprietary solution without IP which may (? or may not) deliver better latency and jitter? Last time i checked (which is a while back), the same support-argument would apply to multicast. Am i missing the point here? Please enlighten me. Thank you!

Zenst 6y ago
I had a look at 1588 and was a rabbit hole of paywalls - latest draft seems to be https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1588-2019.html https://standards.ieee.org/standard/1588-2019.html Why is a standards group paywalled!
- jand 6y ago
  I once made the shocking discovery, that most ISO and IEEE documents can be found on chinese PDF dump sites. Since this is obviously against all copyright laws, i would recommend to explicitly exclude such domains from your google search. Just to be safe.
- __d 6y ago
  Many standards groups require payment for their published standards: the ISO and most national standards bodies (ANSI, etc) are maybe the most prominent examples. This is their business model. You pay for access to the standards documents, and that money funds the development and maintenance process. It's supported by governments requiring adherence to these standards, so implementors are obliged to purchase them. Gratis access to standards is a newer model which relies on a different funding stream. The IETF is one such example.
- lukeh 6y ago
  You can also read the linuxptp code, it's beautifully written.
- jimmySixDOF 6y ago
  Yes almost anything to do with Industrial Ethernet type standards are all over the place. 1588 PTP mixes with IETF TICTOC workgroup output. Synchronous data also gets used in Psuedowire backhaul for low level circuit emulation signaling like from SCADA or GSM towers etc. And that's without going into IECxxxxx's for powerplant comms. Certifiable Precision Timeing over anything is not trivial.
jcrawfordor 6y ago
While this can't be dropped into a lot of existing networks, that doesn't really eliminate the advantages of IP. This might be best explained by analogy: VoIP. Various issues including security model, DHCP-based provisioning, and QoS mean that corporate VoIP phones are typically deployed on a specially prepared network using a dedicated VLAN. While various VoIP vendors claim that you can just drop their solution on your existing network and have it work, this rarely pans out, and it's very common for introduction of VoIP to involve upgrades to network appliances and possibly architectural changes. It might also be important context that prior to the adoption of VoIP most corporate environments were already using a proprietary digital telephone system such as Nortel Meridian, so it's not even a matter of upgrade from analog to digital. Rather, the IP-based network, even with special requirements, is more flexible (due to the large set of routing, switching, etc protocols available for IP) and less costly to maintain (due to common skillset and equipment with computer networks). Even better, while there may be a new network investment required to switch to VoIP, that investment is "dual purpose" and the new network equipment will also serve your computers. I'm not an expert in this field, my experience being limited to some work with Dante equipment years ago---VoIP is more my wheelhouse. But I think the situation is very similar here. Adopters of live audio over IP will almost certainly need to invest in new network equipment and possibly rearchitect their existing network. VLAN segregation and special QoS policy will presumably be the norm. But choice of vendors and common skillset, if nothing else, will make the IP network less costly to maintain. There's a wide variety of technology available for moving IP around in interesting situations, fiber is popular in large theater contexts because of a perceived improvement in reliability over long runs (probably less significant in the days of GbE but I haven't been involved in this kind of thing in a while). Further, with sufficient precautions in place the network can be dual-use and can also serve purposes like administrative networks and even front-of-house wifi. Protocols like Dante are already being widely adopted, and compatibility can be a big headache, so I think a uniform standard for this kind of thing will be very popular.

microcolonel 6y ago

Remembered this a few days ago when watching the recent Wintergatan video where buddy there hooks up this massive multicore with a bunch of preamps to the Marble Machine X, and I'm just there thinking “It sure is satisfying to attach and click in a 28-channel multicore cable, but why not use AES67 (or AES50 for that matter)?”. Nice thing about AES67 is that you can also, in theory, run the preamps and ADCs off PoE.

zlsa 6y ago
I think it's because they want to keep the signal analog as long as possible as a fundamental tenet of the machine.

j_spencer 6y ago

I work in a lot of live sound settings and it's common to see Dante[1] cards coming with a lot of audio consoles these days. It's a proprietary protocol (with support for 1024 channels at 32-bit / 192kHz over a single link); add-in cards for consoles can be quite expensive. A lot of the time, we're needing to connect devices to Dante through a Dante interface (which can be expensive) or via a Dante Virtual Soundcard. It will be interesting to see AES67 appearing more in consoles, especially lower end consoles. Hopefully this will open up Audio over IP to more audio professionals without resorting to proprietary protocols which can make it hard to connect systems from various vendors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking)

lukeh 6y ago

I started working on an AVB to AES67 gateway, still a work in progress (back to day job now), but code is here – https://github.com/PADL/OpenAvnu/blob/lukeh/avb/README.AES67.md https://github.com/PADL/OpenAvnu/blob/lukeh/avb/README.AES67...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]