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AES67 and the future of interoperability

Nowadays, all integrators (and manufacturers for that matter) desire to offer their customers platform interoperability between the various system components they install and support. 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.

We have decidedly taken the next step towards the future of interoperability by joining the X-192 (AES67) steering committee (as a charter member) and co-operating with other audio manufacturers in the Media Network 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 AV platforms.

This quickly emerging standard requires no licensing fees and is poised to create transparency between existing necessarily proprietary systems and allow them to be networked together for audio transport interoperability.

The Q-Sys ecosystem will soon natively support AES67 without additional hardware. Q-Sys is based on a powerful Intel platform and standard network interface technology. This technology platform allows Q-SYS to support concurrent Q-LAN and AES67 network streams even from the same physical port.