AES-67 and the Future of Interoperability

Q-SYS Ecosystem to offer native support for AES-67

Nowadays, all integrators (and manufacturer, for that matter) desire to offer their customers platform interoperability between the various system components they install and support.  David Fuller,Sr. Director of New Product Development,  says “Unfortunately the prevailing perception within the industry is that ‘proprietary’ systems are closed for interoperation with other protocols and technologies.  This is simply not the case.”

QSC’s Q-SYS™ Platform was designed to follow prevailing IT standards and function with off-the-shelf, non-proprietary Ethernet switches. Its network protocol, Q-LAN, transports audio using the same layer 3 networking protocols that IT professionals worldwide already understand and support with all their other TCP/IP networked based systems.  In addition, it also offers discovery, monitoring, real-time diagnostics and control of the entire eco-system, which explains why it must be a proprietary protocol to support our product ecosystem (we make no apologies for this point). However while Q-LAN is technically “proprietary”, Q-SYS offers support for edge networks like Dante, AVB, CobraNet and very soon, AES67. 

Fuller states, “We have decidedly taken the next step towards the future of interoperability by joining the AES-X192 (AES67) steering committee (as a charter member) and cooperating with other audio manufacturers in the Media Networking Alliance in the adoption of AES67.”   Developed by the Audio Engineering Society, AES67 is a truly open layer 3 protocol, designed to allow interoperability between today’s commercial A/V platforms. This quickly emerging standard requires no licensing fees and is poised to create transparency between existing proprietary systems and to allow them to be networked together for audio transport interoperability.