Successor to HDX hardware?

[LoZion]

Great thread.. 👍

[LukeHoward]

Originally Posted by JFreak

I think that's the way audio gear is evolving...

Well, AVB doesn't seem to have had a great deal of market penetration compared to the competing Layer 3 technologies. Using a Gbps Ethernet connection would push the round-trip latency between the DSP and host CPU up by a couple of hundred of microseconds. I suspect we're more likely to see Thunderbolt in an external box, but who knows – perhaps it will be 10Gbps Ethernet?

[Bob Olhsson]

This is the professional broadcast market and not the personal computer market. The AVB video standard was only recently finalized so little product development is likely to be finished yet. Layer 3 gets you up and running using Office Depot gear but in my opinion it's a transition format.

The way SoundGrid works the mike preamp, converter and DSP are all in the same box so round trip latency isn't an issue.

[JCBigler]

There's lots of commercial facilities already using Dante. Audinate has 15-20 times the product line inclusion that AVB does. Other than not carrying video, it's a much more robust and easier to deploy system with higher channel counts than AVB. Dante will work with nearly any off the shelf high end consumer or enterprise level network switches. AVB has to be specifically included as an extra function in the networking equipment, at an extra cost to the end user.

Dante has over 5 years of product line maturity on AVB. I just don't see a future for AVB outside of the ultra high end, nearly boutique users. And I think it would be a mistake for Avid to put all their DSP eggs in the AVB basket.

Of course, Avid has shown that their propensity is to continually make the exact mistakes that cost them market share with every new product release. So they probably WILL put everything on AVB.

[Bob Olhsson]

Avid is already offering full Dante support! Avid has the greatest market share by far in the ultra high end so I wouldn't look for them to surrender that.

[LukeHoward]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

This is the professional broadcast market and not the personal computer market. The AVB video standard was only recently finalized so little product development is likely to be finished yet. Layer 3 gets you up and running using Office Depot gear but in my opinion it's a transition format.

I'd like to agree with you because I like AVB (heck, I just paid several hundred dollars to buy an AVB license for my Ethernet switch), but it sounds like on the video side SMPTE 2022 (SDI over IP) is solving these problems today.

Also, if one considers the history of networking, routable protocols have always trumped non-routable in the long run.

The way SoundGrid works the mike preamp, converter and DSP are all in the same box so round trip latency isn't an issue.

It is when you need to involve the host CPU (virtual instruments, native plugins) or bus (reading/writing the audio from disk), something that Pro Tools does a lot of, particularly given the dearth of AAX DSP plugins. I'd encourage anyone to look on the DUC for "Digidesign Ethernet expansion chassis" Of course, I don't dispute with the right architecture that it's possible to do this.

[JCBigler]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

Avid is already offering full Dante support! Avid has the greatest market share by far in the ultra high end so I wouldn't look for them to surrender that.

Full Dante support on what? the $5,000 MTRX? Which has only been shipping for what..2 months now? And the Dante card is still an option.

And they only have one studio interface, the S3 that has AVB. And the S6L is a $160,000 console and Dante is STILL an option and only offers 16 channels at that.

I was at an Avid sponsored S6 demo a few years ago, and asked about Dante support and the Avid rep actually said to me, "What's Dante?". The Focusrite Rednet stuff gets Dante into an HD|Native/HDX system in a much more efficient and inexpensive manner. Avid is late to the networking game, and their offerings are lackluster at best.

[Bob Olhsson]

We are talking about what to expect next from Avid. I wouldn't expect anything before Media Composer can be networked together with Pro Tools and the obvious candidate is AVB on an extremely fast Ethernet connection.

[LukeHoward]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

We are talking about what to expect next from Avid. I wouldn't expect anything before Media Composer can be networked together with Pro Tools and the obvious candidate is AVB on an extremely fast Ethernet connection.

It's going to depend on what problem they're trying to solve. AVB is excellent for high bandwidth low latency on a controlled network, but doing the kind of granular access control you need for collaboration is difficult at Layer 2, at least without Avid getting into the SDN game. It'll be interesting to see what they do. (Of course maybe they don't care about security but I imagine they do particularly with visual assets.)

[Bob Olhsson]

My understanding is that they are very into security and were long before it became a well known issue.

These would be closed networks within facilities. AVB would enable great flexibility in the number of seats used in a given room or studio. The routers and interfaces would pay for themselves in reduced labor costs.