Prior to Covid, the AES standards meeting round was held in conjunction with each of its two annual conventions (one in Europe, one in the USA). Since Covid, the Standards Meeting round has continued to be held as an online event. The working group meetings were held May 2-5 with a plenary on May 9. The convention will be held in the week after the standards meetings, at Aalto University, Espoo, near Helsinki, Finland on May 13 – 15, 2023.
The IABM has produced a report of the standards meetings that can be downloaded from this webpage (member login required). Below is a short Executive Summary of the meeting round.
For some while the most important work, as far as most IABM members will be concerned, has all been in the Audio Applications of Networks working group for some while:
- AES67 – related projects. This group has been working on the next revision of AES67, planned for publication in 2023. A lot of work has gone into this revision to balance the interests of implementors of the current version and those who wish to make improvements (especially to “testability” within the conformance statement annex).
- Audio Metadata Transport. This project can now proceed, having been held whilst a SMPTE document on which it is based (ST 2110-41) worked its way through ballot (together with a candidate application in order to check the adequacy of the provisions of the SMPTE standard). Those documents have now passed ballot in SMPTE,
and the AES group will resume moving its document to publication. - Open Control Architecture (OCA, AES70). A revision to the 3-part AES70 suite was published January 2019. Since then, the proponents have developed substantial revisions that make the suite more robust and easier to understand. There will be a new AES70 part on JSON implementation (part 4).
- A document on using AES70 for managing AES67 and ST 2110-30 Media Stream Connections is well-advanced and waiting for the AES70 revisions to solidify. There is also a similar document for managing MILAN media stream connections and a NEW document for managing Audinate Dante R connections.
A working group is documenting the characteristics of the various topologies of balanced analog audio interfaces to help preserve quality in interconnects and avoid damage when connecting to unbalanced equipment.
A working group on Digital Library and Archive Systems has been re-established and it met at this round. It is developing a standard on parameters of audio recording technology, hopefully before that information on analog formats is lost. We are monitoring its work in case it proves relevant for IABM members.
