OCA becomes AES standard
Published: WORLD
WORLD: The publication of AES70 means that Open Control Architecture (OCA) has been officially standardised by the Audio Engineering Society Standards Committee (AESSC). The announcement makes OCA an official public open standard.
‘AES70 represents another important step towards the interoperable networked working environment that audio professionals will rely on,’ said Bruce Olson AESSC chair. ‘The AES will continue to develop the standards necessary to enhance these tools.’
Combining AES70 system control with standard media transport will reportedly bring a complete media network solution to the market. In particular, AES70 includes a complete discovery specification which should compliment media transport standards and solutions such as AES67. However, AES70 may be implemented with any media transport mechanism, including AVB/TSN and analogue cable.
‘The availability of an interoperable control, configuration, monitoring, and diagnostic architecture for media networks will provide new opportunities for highly integrated systems,’ noted Jeff Berryman, chair of the OCA technical workgroup and the AES writing group for AES70. ‘Such systems will be able to exchange control data and information in ways previously not possible.’
‘This is another major step towards making the OCA/AES70 vision a reality. One where all network devices are talking the same remote control language, AES70,’ added Marc Weber, chair of the OCA marketing workgroup. ‘In this emerging world, media system integrators and users will be free to choose the best products for their own purposes, with few compatibility concerns. Systems will have long service lifetimes with rich on-going upgradeability. The OCA Alliance and the AES are looking forward to the growth of a media network ecosystem that will offer standardised system control capabilities for professional audio and A/V products and systems.’
On a technical level, AES70 is essentially the same as OCA 1.3, the specifications for which have been available on the OCA Alliance website since October 2014 and which has been used in shipping products that have implemented OCA. However, a few changes have been made.