Any reason to use AES67?

[bachatero]

I'm looking at getting a Neumann KH750 subwoofer for my desk audio setup. I can choose between two options: the regular one and the one with AES67. AES67 is an AoIP standard that lets me get audio over ethernet, which I like because I love working with networking. But it's a whopping $250 more than if I didn't get the AES67 option.

Is there any reason to consider AES67 other than the ability to use regular ethernet cables?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

AES67 along with Dante is designed for professional studio complexes where there may be more than 1000 inputs and 1000 outputs in a configurable virtual matrix supporting countrywide distances and depending on cascaded clocks. If you have none of those requirements, it's probably a waste of your money. It has no audio benefits.

 

[Vincent Kars]

I must admit AES67 appeals to me. It is like USB audio but without the 5m limitation and as it is Ethernet, galvanically isolated by design.
A more flexible solution compared with USB.
However, it never got any traction in the HiFi world.
This is the only one known to me targeting the home: https://nadac.merging.com/product/merging-nadac

 

[EERecordist]

I would approach this looking at managing delay, adopting an ecosystem, and future system changes.

If you have a digital sub, are your mains in time sync? A-D & D-A conversions take time.

From a quick read, this brings you into the Neumann room EQ ecosystem. I haven't read the manual, but if your mains are run off the sub DSP, they should be in sync and you can use the Neumann room eq.

Say in the future you want to change pieces out of your system. Can you do that without excessive cost?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I must admit AES67 appeals to me. It is like USB audio but without the 5m limitation and as it is Ethernet, galvanically isolated by design.
A more flexible solution compared with USB.
However, it never got any traction in the HiFi world.
This is the only one known to me targeting the home: https://nadac.merging.com/product/merging-nadac

You might also look at Dante or Ravenna.

 

[Vincent Kars]

I know that Dante died in Ravenna.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I know that Dante died in Ravenna.

 

[beeface]

AES67 along with Dante is designed for professional studio complexes where there may be more than 1000 inputs and 1000 outputs in a configurable virtual matrix supporting countrywide distances and depending on cascaded clocks. If you have none of those requirements, it's probably a waste of your money. It has no audio benefits.

You’re right, but they absolutely have other commercial applications too

 

[HighImpactAV]

You can only use AES67 on the subwoofer if you have a source for AES67 data streams. The Dante Virtual Soundcard does not currently support AES67.

I use a StormAudio ISP EVO with AES67 for myself and customers' theaters so a subwoofer like the Neumann KH750 AES67 would be easy to integrate.

 

[welwynnick]

That's a relatively modest premium for an AES67 interface. It's tyically an option, and manufacturers usually charge several times as much.

There are several competing AoIP standards.
AVB never got much traction.
Dante is popular, but is expensive due to license fees to Audinate.
Revenna makes sense but not so widely adopted
AES67 was intended to pull them together into a common standard, should have good compatibility, and is likely the way forwards to standarise AoIP.

Can you just use AES3?

 

[Vacceo]

I must admit AES67 appeals to me. It is like USB audio but without the 5m limitation and as it is Ethernet, galvanically isolated by design.
A more flexible solution compared with USB.
However, it never got any traction in the HiFi world.
This is the only one known to me targeting the home: https://nadac.merging.com/product/merging-nadac

To me, it is quite surprising it never did just as you mention. With a combination of active speakers, this delivery method should be a great way to get multichannel, multirrom, made easy.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

That's a relatively modest premium for an AES67 interface. It's tyically an option, and manufacturers usually charge several times as much.

There are several competing AoIP standards.
AVB never got much traction.
Dante is popular, but is expensive due to license fees to Audinate.
Revenna makes sense but not so widely adopted
AES67 was intended to pull them together into a common standard, should have good compatibility, and is likely the way forwards to standarise AoIP.

Can you just use AES3?

This a good summary!

The challenges facing big media organizations is end-to-end compatibility permitting a move away from islands of "networked audio and video" wired together with switched point-to-point circuits towards an end-to-end discoverable and "routable" structure. Making all this work, including standardizing on PTP (flavours), discoverability and a standardized control layer is what drives the cost overhead.

Despite some people thinking their domestic networks are complex (needing audio Ethernet switches!), domestic networks are mostly layer2, making broadcast or multicast discovery and control simple. In complex, highly resilient IP/Ethernet backbones constructing scalable multicast discovery and management control systems is tough and expensive. The market for massive Audio and Video over IP networks is also fairly specialist and so economies of scale don't kick in!

Eventually, there may be trickle down to the domestic world (which would be great) but in the meantime the overhead is expensive.

 

[pablolie]

You’re right, but they absolutely have other commercial applications too

Where? It's not for home audio. It has limited adoption. At this point it may be a legacy thing, it was introduced in a different world 10 years ago, and still has limited adoption, and basically zero adoption in home audio. I haven't followed it, early on there was excitement, but it kinda fell off the radar. Back then synching and QoS may have been relevant in professional audio environments, but these days, with 100GE being quite cheap, who knows (I admit not having followed it much).

 

[beeface]

Where? It's not for home audio. It has limited adoption. At this point it may be a legacy thing, it was introduced in a different world 10 years ago, and still has limited adoption, and basically zero adoption in home audio. I haven't followed it, early on there was excitement, but it kinda fell off the radar. Back then synching and QoS may have been relevant in professional audio environments, but these days, with 100GE being quite cheap, who knows (I admit not having followed it much).

Dante - more so than AES67 in my experience - has actually been widely adopted in the AV industry (along with other similar technologies like QSC's Q-LAN).

Take a look at this doc for some simple examples https://my.audinate.com/sites/defau...ship-corporate-education-handout-audinate.pdf

More info on the Dante site: https://www.getdante.com/meet-dante/markets/

There are pros and cons to the AVoIP approach that I don't have time to get into detail about at the moment, but it involves various factors like cost, remote serviceability, simplifying cabling, rack space, etc.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

For anybody interested in a real-world project to roll out a studio complex with live audio and video over IP, this is a good article:

https://ipshowcase.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1330-Cardiff-Central-Square-An-Update.pdf