AES Standards News Blog

AES3-1-2009: AES standard for digital audio — Digital input-output interfacing — Serial transmission format for two-channel linearly-represented digital audio data

AES3 provides for the serial digital transmission of two channels of periodically sampled and uniformly quantized audio signals on various media.

— Part 1: Audio Content: specifies the semantics of the audio data, including the "validity" flag. It also specifies the sampling frequency by reference to AES5.

— Part 2: Metadata and Subcode: specifies the information transmitted with the audio data: principally the "channel status" but also user data and the use of the auxiliary bits to carry a co-ordination signal.

— Part 3: Transport: specifies the framing and channel coding for transmission on a unidirectional point-to-point physical link. The specified format minimizes the direct-current (DC) component on the transmission line, facilitates clock recovery from the data stream, and makes the interface insensitive to the polarity of connections.

— Part 4: specifies the physical signals that convey the bit stream specified in Part 3. The current version covers electrical signals on twisted-pair and co-axial cables. Other media, including fibre optic, are under consideration.

Copies may be obtained here