"We think that part of the increase in devices we have recorded is due us being more diligent with the research, but we have also noted a significant increase in product availability with very many product launches over the past year," remarked consultant Roland Hemming. "We included products that use custom protocols as well as looking at those that are AES67 compliant. For AVB we counted all AVnu members' products separately from those who use the underlying AVB technology for their own solutions."
RHC's research also included custom protocols for the first time, and there are 104 devices with their own flavour of networking. "It's important not to jump onto the headline figures," continued Hemming. "It's a small dataset and this can skew some of the statistics." Details of how the counting was managed are available on the RH Consulting website.
There are now 104 companies actively producing networked audio devices. This means that approximately 50% of all manufacturers who have signed up to develop for at least one of the major protocols is now producing products as a result of signing up. In conclusion Hemming added: "The audio world is clearly becoming more networked, it just hasn't yet decided which protocol to use!"
In order to help people specify networked audio products RH Consulting has released an iOS app allowing you to search for 'Dante amplifier' or 'Cobranet Mixer' for example. You can build shopping lists of equipment and export them. There is even data on a number of proprietary protocols and you can also search for AES67 compliant devices. For those who want a fuller market overview you can perform an in-app purchase for complete downloads of product or protocol categories. Since the database is changing all the time you can update the app's data at any time.
The app - called 'Networked Audio Devices' - is available on iTunes stores worldwide. Exports of complete data, specifically for analysts and product marketing teams to evaluate competitor products is available as an in-app purchase, say RH Consulting.
(Lee Baldock)
