SC-02-02 meeting, Online, 2020-10

Report of the meeting of the SC-02-02 Working Group on Digital audio interfaces, held online, 2020-10-05.

Present were Paul Treleaven, Richard Cabot, Anthony Kuzub, Bruce Olson, Al Walker, Junichi Yoshio, Ed Simon, Philip Maness, Gen Ichimura, John Grant

The formal notice on patent policy was read.

The agenda was approved as written.

There had been one comment on the draft report of the previous meeting, held online, 2020-05-27, which was incorporated into the published version.

Projects assigned to this group but not mentioned here had no action requested or required - see www.aes.org/standards/meetings/project-status.cfm for details.

Open projects:

AES10-R Review of AES10-2008 (r2019): AES Recommended Practice for Digital Audio Engineering - Serial Multichannel Audio Digital Interface (MADI)
AES11-R Review of AES11-2009 (r2019): AES Recommended Practice for Digital Audio Engineering - Synchronization of digital audio equipment in studio operations
AES50-R Review of AES50-2011 (s2017), AES standard for digital audio engineering - High-resolution multi-channel audio interconnection (HRMAI)
AES51-R Review of AES51-2006 (s2017): AES standard for digital audio - Digital input-output interfacing - Transmission of ATM cells over Ethernet physical layer
AES-2id-R Review of AES-2id-2006 (r2017): AES information document for digital audio engineering - Guidelines for the use of the AES3 interface
AES-10id-R Review of AES-10id-2005 (r2017): AES information document for digital audio engineering - Engineering guidelines for the multichannel audio digital interface (MADI) AES10
AES-R6-R Review of AES-R6-2011, Guidelines for AES50 (HRMAI)
AES-R8-R: Review of AES-R8-2015: AES standards project report - Synchronisation of digital audio over wide areas

All of the above contain the word "master" in a context in which SMPTE and IEEE are removing it and another word from their standards, following recent concerns in the USA that they refer to undesirable historical practices. This does not include the term "master tape" in AES5.

SMPTE proposes to change the terms to "leader" and "follower" respectively, however, the meeting felt that "lead" should be avoided as in the context in which the words appear in these standards it could be construed as the opposite of "lag", i.e. referring to a signal that arrives early.

The meeting proposed changes which the Secretariat will incorporate into new drafts which will be circulated to the WG. In most contexts, "master" is replaced by "reference" or simply deleted. Where timing at a receiver is recovered from the transmitted signal (in AES50 and AES51) the two parties are referred to as transmitter and receiver. In AES-R6 SMPTE's term "follower" is used along with "reference".

There are no plans to change any other terminology that might be regarded as offensive in some quarters.

Liaisons:

G Ichimura reported that IEC 60958 parts 1, 3, and 5 are due for review. Part 4 has been extended to 2024 to bring it into line with AES3.
A Kuzub reported that SC-05-02 is extending AES72; a diagram has been uploaded to the SC-02-02 document site and there will be discussion in the SC-05-02 meeting on Friday.

New projects

No new projects were proposed.

New business

No new business was raised.

The next meeting will be scheduled in conjunction with the AES 150th Convention, to be held either face-to-face or online in May 2020.