OCA Alliance Members Present Key Instructional Networked Audio Sessions

	Ethan Wetzell, OCA Alliance marketing chair

The OCA Alliance -- the AV industry alliance promoting awareness and adoption of Open Control Architecture (the Audio Engineering Society AES70 standard) -- is promoting further understanding and wider awareness of the open standard for control of media networks with two key presentations by alliance members, as part of the program of networked audio sessions at the 143rd AES Convention in New York, October 18 - 21.

"How to Make an AES70 Device" and "How to Make an AES70 Controller" will present expert instruction, in real-time, on approaches to building fully functional AES70 implementations. The two sessions build upon each other, and are presented by technical experts from OCA Alliance member manufacturing companies Bosch, Focusrite, and Archwave.

Networked Audio: NA09 - How to Make an AES70 Device: Saturday, October 21, 9:00 am - 10:30 am (room 1E08)

Networked Audio: NA10 - How to Make an AES70 Controller: Saturday, October 21, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm (room 1E09)

These sessions will also provide attendees with information on how the free technical resources available from the OCA Alliance can be used to build the robust, scalable, and professionally-oriented AES70 open control specification into products and reference designs.

"We launched a new portal for the technical resources that the alliance makes publically available to support AES70 adoption and implementation at InfoComm 2017," says OCA Alliance marketing chair Ethan Wetzell. "This was received with great enthusiasm from the attendees. We further noticed that the nature of the conversations we were having had shifted from explaining what AES70 is, towards how it can be used and implemented. The AES convention presents a perfect opportunity to take the next step in our technical advocacy and sit down with people, and actually show them how to use the tools we provide."

"It's always fun to go beyond theory and actually build something. We wanted to provide that opportunity to AES attendees and members, to work with a real demo of the standard and see how to implement it."

Several OCA Alliance member companies are exhibiting at AES:
1602 Group TiMax: Booth #451
Calrec Audio: Booth #631
d&b audiotechnik US: Room #3D04
Focusrite Pro: Booth 366 Focusrite demozone, 517
JBL / Harman: Room #1E05
RTS Intercom Systems: Booth #N464 (NAB)
Yamaha: 1E03, 624

AES70 is an open control and monitoring standard for professional audio and AV media network devices. From a single device and controller, to networks with almost any number of devices and multiple controllers, AES70 provides for powerful, high speed, low cost, robust system control and monitoring of devices from different manufacturers.

AES70 can be used in conjunction with any available transport protocol (Dante, AVB, AES67, Cobranet, etc.). Offering interoperability across different media transports and manufacturers' devices, it enables whole new levels of complex system integration and options as to how and where network devices can be deployed. The architecture operates on commodity Ethernet networking hardware, or via standard 802.11 Wi-Fi.

Control functionality allows system professionals to change and monitor all operating parameters of a network device, including the creation and deletion of signal paths, parameter adjustments for signal processing objects, network device firmware updates and management of access control. Control can also be limited to provide simpler "operator" functionality; for instance, providing just level, mute, power on/off and fault indication.

AES70 is the standard upon which the Open Control Architecture ecosystem of devices, software, development tools, and technical resources is based.

AES70 is not itself a media transport, or a means of programming a network device or system control, or generating a user interface. AES70 is available free of charge to manufactures, system integrators and designers, to implement with their own and third party network devices, as they require.

OCA has been ratified as an open public standard by the AES as AES70.

OCA is not itself a media transport, or a means of programming a network device or system control, or generating a user interface. OCA is available free of charge to manufactures, system integrators and designers, to implement with their own and third party network devices, as they require.