Digital audio has been among us for longer than most people can remember. Remember the heated debates over what sounds better, a CD or a vinyl record? While the jury is still out on that one, end-to-end analogue signal chains are becoming collectors’ items, not least because digital can be every bit as detailed and unadulterated as fine analogue audio components, while being infinitely more convenient in a lot of respects.
Audio over IP is an even more sophisticated and flexible way of sharing, processing and mixing digital audio signals. And let’s face it: nowadays, both the AV industry and the broadcast sector use production or transmission chains that are fully digital. There are still holdouts, of course, especially with components closest to the sound source and the human ear: microphones, headphones, and speakers. Personal preference plays a big role, and the fact most effects plug-ins specialise in emulating classic devices of yore clearly indicates imperfections can be extremely pleasing to the ear.
DIGITAL REALM
Audio processing, transport, distribution, and transmission are difficult to imagine outside the digital realm. The digital strategy has furthermore allowed vendors to focus on the human interface used to operate their audio tools.
Virtualisation, cloud-native solutions and related infrastructures are being harnessed to improve workflows that no longer need to rely on compute power close to the operator. Similarly, distributed production workflows are on the rise everywhere.
A second wave has now arrived, where digital technology is expected to work for us. After establishing the platform, the underlying technology is able to deliver this by means of purely software-based solutions running on agnostic hardware. The most striking results of this development are shrinking footprints in rack rooms, data centres or the cloud. Today’s generally available processing capacity is such that manufacturers simply must embrace function-agnostic servers for increasingly flexible usage models.
As a result, the emphasis is being placed back on the creative side: the talent or performance. The tools providing the magic reduce on-site clutter and are easy to deploy, bringing super-high quality to more remote locations. Agile software development and deployment – often in real time – is another aspect of this second wave. Thanks to the use of containerised microservices, for instance, processing apps evolve much faster than in the past: small tweaks can be released in days rather than years, new options and features can be added as soon as they become available, and so on.
Open standards, a stalwart in broadcast, are gaining a foothold in AV, too, where collaboration trumps proprietary approaches, and a common glue allows operators to focus on their job. SMPTE, RAVENNA, AES and other standards triggered the first wave in broadcast. IPMX is bringing this to AV.
High signal densities and speedy delivery enhance the user experience in control room or auditorium, with increasingly sophisticated sound delivery approaches and no end in sight. How much of this is conceivable in a purely analogue world?
