UK - Built on 13 years of audio research and four years of video data, the 2025 edition of the RH Consulting (RHC) report provides a detailed analysis of the adoption of audio and video networking protocols into manufacturer products. Compiled by leading audio consultants and engineers at RHC and considered a benchmark document by industry professionals, the report contains an analysis of 6,942 networked AV products across 676 brands.
“One of the headline findings from this year’s report is that we can now consider audio networking adoption for professional audio products to be complete,” confirms Roland Hemming, audio consultant at RHC. “There is a massive choice of networked audio products available in all categories, and in our opinion, the next increase we can expect to see in coming years is the adoption of the technology in sectors such as musical instruments, commercial integration and unified communications.”
Unsurprisingly, Dante is the market leader by a large margin, having been adopted by more products in the past year than all other protocols combined. Ravenna follows in second place. Despite entering an era of ‘mass adoption’, the report points out that it has, in fact, taken 28 years to reach this milestone, a sign of maturity in the market.
“Products are generally becoming more flexible, and fewer variants are needed to deal with interfacing with other types of connection, partly a response to the recent supply chain crisis,” continues Hemming. “With fewer analogue products on the market, we expect to see the adoption rates level out.”
In contrast, the adoption of video-over-IP paints a more abstract picture. The report, which analyses Dante AV, IPMX, NDI, SDVoE and ST 2110, finds that NDI still leads the way in terms of product numbers, but Dante AV has seen the highest percentage of growth, year on year. ST 2110 leads closely behind, but the curve is not yet established enough to identify any clear preferred standards.
“Video remains somewhat of a ‘Wild West’. We can draw no sensible conclusions about what’s happening, as whilst NDI, ST 2110 and Dante AV show significant product number growth, there are different versions within each protocol, and SDVoE products don’t all work together either,” explains Hemming. “From an interoperability point of view, the product numbers are misleading and some major players in the market have not yet adopted any of the video-over-IP standards. Therefore, we can say that we’re still at the integrated phase of adoption.”
The annual RHC Networked AV Report can be downloaded, free of charge, from the RHC website.
