Audinate Announces Availability of Ethernet AVB Solution

PR Log (Press Release) – Jun 09, 2009 – Portland, OR.– Audinate announced that the next major release of Dante, digital media networking  solution will be compliant with the standards emerging from the IEEE 802.1 Audio Video Bridging (AVB) task group.

AVB is a developing standard for media networking that utilizes IEEE 802.1as clock synchronization and IEEE 802.1Qav QoS to support audio and video media transport across Ethernet networks.

Audinate’s patent-pending Dante networking has been AVB ready for some time as it uses some of the same underlying principles. Dante began as early pioneering work in 2003 using the IEEE 1588 clock synchronization standard and Diffserv/802.1Q QoS as foundations. For Dante, moving to formal support for AVB is a straightforward activity since the AVB standards are based directly on existing standards already used by Dante. As a result, audio equipment manufacturers and solution providers are choosing Dante today to ensure a smooth transition as they move their products lines towards AVB compliance.

The Dante solution offers substantially more than simply the lower layers needed to support media transport.  Dante solves the problems that AV manufacturers and installers face. Dante provides more than media transport, it provides the higher OSI protocol layers as well, with easy to use solutions for design, configuration and audio channel routing. When combined with Dante’s automatic self discovery of devices, descriptive text-based labeling and control and monitoring, audio networking just got easy.

Audinate’s AVB compliant Dante solution will be available in the 4th quarter this year, with upgrade options available for its current Dante customers utilizing AVB compatible FPGAs.

“AVB is intended to support professional networked audio and video markets, automotive entertainment systems, and home networking systems” said Aidan Williams, CTO of Audinate.  “To successfully meet the requirements of these markets, a networking solution must be simple to use and configure.  Our customers readily recognize the value that Dante can deliver on top of AVB for a true plug and play solution”.

Dante provides high performance digital media networking over Ethernet and IP that meets the quality and performance requirements of professional live sound, broadcast systems, AV installations and recording systems. Dante can deliver the very low latency required by professional audio, and its network-centric approach to synchronization allows sample-accurate, perfectly synchronized playout across different audio channels, devices and networks, even over multiple switch hops. Dante also offers the flexibility of operating on 100Mbps as well as 1Gigabit Ethernet networks.
   
“Audinate will offer an easy to design solution for OEM customers wanting to deploy AVB” said David Myers, COO of Audinate. “As the standards continue to evolve we will continue to update our implementation for customers wishing to have an up to date AVB solution”.