Audio networking consultants RH Consulting have been counting networked audio merchandise and licensees since 2013 in an effort to chart the adoption of audio networking within the professional audio, AV and broadcast markets. Acknowledged because the benchmark for monitoring tendencies in networked audio, the tenth version of the annual report covers all the key protocols together with Dante, RAVENNA, AES67, AVB, Milan and others. This 12 months, for the primary time, the report has broadened its scope to incorporate networked video and management merchandise utilizing AES70, SDVoE and ST 2110, amongst others.
In response to Roland Hemming, audio marketing consultant, principal of RH Consulting and the creator of this annual survey, “the final twelve months have seen a whole overhaul in the best way RHC conducts its analysis and even nearer collaboration with related trade commerce associations and producers. Consequently, the tenth version of the report is probably the most complete and correct so far.”
The statistics present that fairly clearly that the variety of networked AV merchandise continues to develop, regardless of the difficulties we’ve all encountered during the last two years within the face of the worldwide pandemic. A complete of 4,142 networked merchandise are at the moment transport from 444 producers, which represents much more new merchandise available on the market than final 12 months. In AoIP phrases, it’s no shock to see that Dante stays forward of the sport by an order of magnitude that appears unlikely that anybody will bridge, however Ravenna continues to progress modestly in second place, and stays the primary protocol of selection within the broadcast market.
Whereas Dante stays by far the dominant audio networking expertise with extra producers utilizing Audinate’s expertise than anybody else, 3,301 merchandise at the moment out there, and 472 new merchandise added prior to now 12 months, the variety of AES67-compatible merchandise is now shut to three,000. AES67 appropriate merchandise work throughout Dante, Ravenna, Livewire+, Wheatnet and some which are ‘uncooked’ AES67 appropriate. Whereas Dante at the moment helps AES67, not all Dante options out there help the usual. Attention-grabbing additionally to notice the expansion in ST2110-30 (AES67) and ST2110-31 merchandise, which the report breaks down for the primary time.
As Roland Hemming additionally notes, “With 259 merchandise, Ravenna exhibits the second highest improve in merchandise. This depend consists of about 50 merchandise that use normal Ravenna however for their very own causes don’t (at the moment) publicly state that it’s a Ravenna answer.”
Video and management are a unique story as each are nonetheless very a lot of their infancy with regards to IP networking. The report accommodates an in depth breakdown of what was checked out and the way merchandise had been counted. In broad phrases, Roland Hemming notes that the market feels very very like audio networking did within the early days: “The most important proportion of networked video merchandise are merely interfaces to get different forms of video sign on and off the community,” he observes. “It was a lot the identical story for AoIP ten years in the past when there was an enormous variety of analogue-to-network enter/output units. Nevertheless, this has since diminished fairly significantly as increasingly more producers combine networking functionality immediately into their merchandise.
“Curiously, after we first began counting networked audio merchandise in 2013, we reported a complete of 428 units. Ten years later now we have counted virtually precisely the identical quantity – 420 to be exact – of networked video merchandise. This can be a fascinating comparability and can provide us a superb alternative to check the expansion curves of networked video towards networked audio over the following few years.”
For a full breakdown of all of the statistics and a complete itemizing of all of the protocols thought of and the way the information is compiled, please go to https://rhconsulting.uk/weblog/networked-audio-products-2022/
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