With the ratification of Open Control Architecture, the AES has now made AES70 an official public open standard.

Originally proposed as a field-tested specification by the OCA Alliance, the standard has already seen successful implementation in the field on commercially available products from alliance member companies. The Alliance is a not-for-profit association of professional audio and AV industry manufacturers invested in audio networking.

Bruce Olson, AES chair for the standard, said "AES70 represents another important step towards the interoperable networked working environment that audio professionals will rely on.” The AES, he added, will continue to enhance the standard.

Combining AES70 system control with standard media transport will bring a complete media network solution to the market — one in which devices from diverse manufacturers can readily interoperate.

AES70 includes a complete discovery specification which will complement media transport standards and solutions such as AES67. However, AES70 may be implemented with any media transport mechanism, including AVB/TSN and analog cable.

Jeff Berryman, chair of the OCA technical workgroup and the AES writing group for AES70, said the availability of an interoperable control, configuration, monitoring and diagnostic architecture for media networks will allow integrated systems to exchange control data and information in ways previously not possible.

Marc Weber, chair of the OCA marketing workgroup, said in an environment where all network devices are talking the same remote control language, media system integrators and users will be free to choose products with few compatibility concerns. “Systems will have long service lifetimes with rich ongoing upgradeability,” Weber said.

Technically, AES70 is essentially the same as OCA 1.3, the specification that has been available on the OCA Alliance website since October, 2014. It has been used in shipping products that have implemented OCA. However, a few changes have been made. The official standards documents can be downloaded from the standards section of the AES website.

The AESSC is the organization responsible for the standards program of the Audio Engineering Society, publishing a number of technical standards, informational documents and technical reports.

Complete information, including scopes of working groups and project status, along with finalized standards documents, are available here.