Shay: Manufacturers Plugged In to AES67

The Audio Engineering Society held its second annual Plugfest this past November at NPR studios in Washington, with nearly a dozen manufacturers in attendance, each working toward the goal of audio interoperability. Telos Alliance Chief Science Officer Greg Shay was on hand, and says despite the attendees being competitors, there was a spirit of cooperation that made the event a success.

"There was a very good spirit of enthusiasm and a good old-fashioned engineering attitude of 'Let's make this work,'" Greg points out. As testing progressed and teams saw positive results, a good mood presided over the testing area. "If something didn't work quite right, nobody was hassling anybody. Everyone went out of their way to have patience and find workarounds that maximized the successes." Greg adds that this is precisely what the standards committee has always hoped for. "The best hopes have always been that vendors would engage and participate, so it was very positive."

In addition, the success rates for the various tests were very high. But about those tests... How is equipment tested for AES67 compliance anyway? Greg points out that right now, there is no formal test for compliance. At Plugfest, each manufacturer tests their equipment with that of others, and everyone gets to try with everyone else. This is the first best step until AES67 test equipment becomes available, which is something the committee hopes will become a reality in the foreseeable future.

Some of the vendors found they have more work to do, but that's to be expected, and nobody wrote off any poriton of the testing to just move on to the next step. "People found ways to do as much as they could and not just mark things off as having not worked," says Greg. Instead everyone worked to see how close they could get to the goal of interoperation.

This resulted in valuable information for vendors to take back to the office, to determine how things could work as much as possible, and what else needs to be done to comply with the standard.

So what does all this mean for the future of the audio interoperability? Has the testing provided insight into potential enhancements to the AES67 standard? In fact, quite the opposite. Only a few minor syntax errors and clarifications have been made to the standard as a result of testing at the first two Plugfest events. "The successful testing results that came out of the Plugfest demonstrated that the standard needs little or no enhancements," Greg notes. "This was true from the first Plugfest (in 2014)."

It's a positive development indicating the standard is very complete. Greg says another positive is the verification that manufacturers are interpreting the standard in the same way, and are clearly vested in the process. "What we saw was a demonstration of the investments companies are making. They're not just talking about it."

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