AES New York 2015
Live Sound Track Event B4
Friday, October 30, 9:00 am — 10:30 am (Room 1A10)
Broadcast and Streaming Media: B4 - Audio and IP: Are We There Yet?
Moderator:Steve Lampen, Belden - San Francisco, CA, USA
Panelists:
Kevin Gross, AVA Networks - Boulder, CO, USA
David Josephson, Josephson Engineering, Inc. - Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Dan Mortensen, Dansound Inc. - Seattle, WA, USA
Tony Peterle, Worldcast Systems - Miami, FL, USA
Tim Pozar, Fandor - San Francisco, CA, USA
Abstract:
In 2010, Reed Hundt, former head of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a speech at Columbia Business School, [We] “decided in 1994 that the Internet should be the common medium in the United States and broadcast should not be.” This was twenty-one years ago. So, are we there yet? I tried to invite Mr. Hundt to participate on this panel, but he is too well protected, I couldn’t even get an invitation to him.
This panel of esteemed experts will look at the “big picture” of audio in networked formats and internet delivery systems. Do we have the hardware and software we need? If not, what is missing? Can we expect the same quality, consistency, and reliability as we had in the old analog audio days? There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of companies using proprietary Layer 2/Layer 3 Ethernet for audio, and there is much work on combining or cross-fertilizing these systems, such as Dante and Ravenna. There are also new standards such as IEEE 802.1BA-2011 AVB (Audio-Video Bridging), and IEEE 802.1ASbt TSN (Time-Sensitive Networks) that use specialized Ethernet switches in a network architecture. But these do not address anything outside of the Ethernet network itself. Then we have AES IP67, specifically looking at “high performance” IP-based audio.
Mixed in with this is the question “What is a broadcaster? Do you have to have a transmitter to be a broadcaster?” Consider that next year (2016) one company claims they will be the largest broadcaster in the world, and that company is Netflix.
