What are the benefits of AES67?

While AES67 does not provide performance improvements beyond what Dante already delivers today, the inclusion of AES67 in the Dante solution enables interoperability with other AES67 implementations by other compliant vendors.Today, Dante provides interoperable audio networking between hundreds of products developed by our licensees. Dante already implements an IP Layer 3 transport, but AES67 will provide an alternative open standard within Dante for transport using the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).To achieve interoperability, AES67 mandates a specific RTP payload format for delivering audio over IP networks, as well as methods for exchanging information about audio streams. RTP is already used extensively in communication and entertainment systems that involve streaming media, such as VoIP telephony, video conferencing, and IP television.  AES67 offers the potential for lower cost network transport built on mature standards when compared to other less widely adopted industry standards.AES67 can exploit Ethernet switches supporting the IEEE-1588 precision time protocol and Quality of Service (QoS) but, unlike some other network standards, does not depend on specialized switches in order to operate.Like Dante’s transport layer today, AES67 is by nature a routable IP protocol.  This allows for audio over IP solutions to scale beyond simple local area networks, passing through routers as well as switches.  This potentially opens broad new markets for audio over IP solutions.