OCA Alliance member FBT expands AES70 portfolio

Long-term OCA Alliance member, Italian professional audio specialists, FBT, has enjoyed a bumper year in 2023, debuting a host of new products debut that highlight the benefits and advantages of the AES70 standard. Having built their INFINITO system management software to leverage the AES70 platform, the FBT OCA portfolio has now expanded to include powered loudspeakers, control software and, new this year, the new MIURA Series of DSP and Dante™– enabled power amplifiers.

“When we started designing our ‘INFINITO – System Management Suite’, the main challenge was to find a stable, flexible, and easy communication protocol to deploy in our MCUs,” commented Marco Secondini, R&D Engineer with FBT. “Being developed for professional audio systems, the AES70 standard allowed us to quickly develop our INFINITO control system in all the new FBT products. It has brought an additional value since our products were ready to be integrated into complex and interoperable systems, entirely manageable from a unified control platform.”

“The way FBT has utilized AES70 to quickly and efficiently develop a media networking ecosystem across their portfolio is a great example of how standards can provide benefits to end users as well as development groups,” notes Ethan Wetzell, Marketing Chair for the OCA Alliance. “The use of standards really is a force multiplier for engineers that results in more development, quicker time to market, and a strategically sound investment in resources, time, and money.”

For more information on FBT, please visit their website at www.fbt.it

The OCA Alliance, the trade association dedicated to the promotion, support, and development of the AES70 control standard, is pleased to announce the recent membership of Austrian networking specialists, JOYNED.

Formed by pro audio industry veterans, JOYNED aims to enable companies to incorporate media networking into their products by providing tools and resources that leverage open public standards. At ISE 2023, JOYNED showcased their development board that combines MILAN™ and AES70.

“JOYNED was founded to facilitate and promote network technologies for the professional Pro AV industry,” says Richi Rozas, CMO and Co-Founder of JOYNED. “Professional consortia like the OCA Alliance provide the right environments to collaborate, influence and develop the future of these technologies.

Open standards are the basis for reliable, future-proof ecosystems,” he continues. “They generate certainty for manufacturers, who will benefit from know-how that goes beyond the expertise of their particular company. Now, the real challenge is to fill the gap between the standard’s specifications and the actual implementation of the technology into a commercial product. This is where we want to help and add value to the manufacturers, enabling them to simplify this complex process.

The whole concept of a network ecosystem implies the convergence of different media and protocols for both transport and control of AV data. Manufacturers can now get a simplified way to implement AVB/MILAN™ and AES70/OCA with our software. The vision of JOYNED is to actively work and promote this convergence process so end-users and manufacturers can take full benefit from the advantages of the network.”

“Open public standards are the industry’s best resource for tackling the complex media networking world. The OCA Alliance is thrilled to have JOYNED as a member” says Ethan Wetzell, Marketing Chair for The OCA Alliance. “Their work to bring additional options for developers to incorporate AES70 into their products will allow even more companies to add these standards-based solutions into their products. This also reinforces the idea that solutions may be built out of combinations of standards, and we see a lot of opportunity for this combination of AES70 and MILAN™.”

For more information on JOYNED, please visit their website at www.joyned.at