Taking the ‘sting’ out of evolving digital audio networks

Digital audio networking is here to stay. It is the state of the art, and it is the future. But with which standard? Today there are multiple competing systems, and work on a compatibility standard is underway. Knowing a digital audio networking standard is the future that will be, what should equipment vendors and user do in the meantime to get ‘over the hump’ of these next few years?

How can an equipment manufacturer today designing to use one particular digital audio network interface potentially leave the door open to the future standard even though that is not yet settled? Broad categories of equipment design issues will be considered, like: network capability, synchronisation, stability and design of local clocking hardware, stream formats, memory for buffering, MIPS for protocol parsing, real time requirements on hardware and software.

This pro audio paper will examine this problem by breaking down where some of the real design issues are. Given the difference between the systems, what is the most that could need to be changed?

Pro Audio White Paper: Taking the ‘Sting’ Out of Evolving Digital Audio Networks.pdf