Advantages of IP Audio

I saw the mention of IP audio on another thread here on the IAIB. I wanted some info on it. Is there anyone here using IP audio? What are the advantages of IP Audio.

Oscar... I am just learning about IP audio myself...however my background is computer networking so I have some experience with the IP standards. From what I can determine there are few players in this space... Dante being one... AVB or Audio Video Bridging is the standard or set of standards being developed by IEEE.

At present I am not using IP Audio but will be purchasing a mixer that supports it. The advantages from my perspective are several but most notably... auto-sensing (devices can intelligent connect and reconnect, self heal, re-reroute) basic fault tolerance. Very low latency is possible...

AVB - Audio Video Bridging Wiki
AVNU Members This is list of vendors and partners that work with the AVB standand.
Link to Dante info

Thought this illustration was a good one for "WHY IP AUDIO IS A GOOD THING" :)
Attachment 155

Hi, Oscar.
I work for the Telos Alliance, plus I do a podcast on the GFQ Network.
Yes, literally thousands of radio and TV stations, plus podcasters and other content creators are using IP-Audio every day and right now. Indeed, there are over 4,000 Axia IP-audio consoles working at this very moment. The GFQ Network uses an Axia IP-Audio console to produce all shows.
It's important to note there are 2 basic flavors of IP-Audio: 1) the low-latency variety that's linear and intended for use within a facility. 2) the encoded variety - like MP3, AAC, etc. that is buffered and used over the public internet.

If you really want to know all about IP-audio, my late friend, Steve Church, wrote a book about it...
http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Over-IP-...o+church+pizzi

Another good read - it's very to-the-point (and it's free) - is this primer on Livewire IP-audio systems:
http://axiaaudio.com/tech/introducti...r-v21/download

Finally, here's a 2-part video about building an IP-Audio studio...
http://youtu.be/R4hG-OaOXZQ

Best!

Kirk

Thanks Kharnack...I am eating this stuff up in my usual OCD style. I also stumbled across this doc from Harman that discusses their approach and also generically discusses many of the alternatives out there. It was a pretty good primer on some of the history and some background on why Harman chose the AVB and Dante standard. All in all very fascinating stuff...I had no idea all of these competing standards for AoIP existed out there... Makes perfect sense of course... just a babe in the woods here :)

http://hiqnet.harmanpro.com/content/...networking.pdf

WOW Kirk thanks for the reply. I recently discovered TWiRT and live it. At times it a bit over my head but you guys make it easy to learn new things.

Now let me present this question to you. When will the consumer market start incorporating IP Audio? Do you think we will see companies like Mackie start adding it to their systems?

Given that Mackie is part of the AVNU http://www.avnu.org/about_us/our_members I suspect they will... Here is a press release from Mackie from 2011 discussing this exact subject... http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/p...dustry_standar

Oscar I found this in my internet wanderings and thought it might be helpful. http://audmaxbroadcast.hu/downloads/AoIPstandards.pdf

I also see that you are in Corona and it looks like there is a convention starting tomorrow 10/17 that might be of interest if you have the time... Not sure of the costs... http://www.avnetwork.com/events/0011...ectivity/91804

I do not expect to see IP audio coming down to the consumer level anytime soon. Obviously with time technology evolves and get better but analog is still dominant and will be for a long time. With that said in the Pro world I couldn't ever see going back to analog. IP audio makes things much easier. Less cables, less mess, and overall better quality

I hope this isnt true Andrew. I would love to have less of a headache with IP audio and have it affordable for us low enders. A problem I see is that many computers now do not have a ethernet jack on them. IP audio would require this. Every computer has an audio jack

TL;DR - Ethernet cards are incredibly cheap (less than 15 bucks and free shipping on Amazon) Are they leaving them off laptops these days as well? That would be crazy...

I also hope your right Andrew. From what I can tell it appears to be a process that occurs over and over again with technology. Competing methods, all which have their merits, struggle for dominance. Standards organizations define interoperability between these methods. One standard emerges for whatever reason and unfortunately it's not always due to technical superiority. Can you say VHS. The general theme being that it's not always the technology but who has the better lobbyists or deeper pockets.

However let's take Ethernet as an example... do you remember Token-Ring, Arcnet, ATM, FDDI just to name the more prominent for microcomputing... Token-Ring seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird much to IBM's chagrin. IBM certainly had deep enough pockets and I am sure a cadre of lobbyists. Arcnet surprisingly still survives in embedded/control systems. Now with regard to Ethernet it was, at least in my opinion, the technically superior option. However I hold that opinion only in hindsight. At the time I was a big Token-Ring advocate...however I can't for the life of me remember why :)

Speaking of standards -- AES67 will be a standard that will help bridge the gap between the various technologies out there (Livewire, Wheatnet etc..) Axia AES67 FAQ

Exactly my hope...Seems I came into this at just the right time when convergence is occurring. BTW if you are in the NYC area the AES convention in going on right now 11/17-20 at the Javits Center... http://www.avnetwork.com/events/0011...ectivity/91804

Wow so much to learn...

Anyone else here using IP Audio for Podcasting? would love to hear some stories on how it helped and if its worth it