OCA Alliance Demonstrates New Technology at AES
The OCA Alliance is at the 139th International AES Convention in New York, with a live light-weight hardware demonstration– the OCA Microdemo.
The standardization of OCA is moving toward the public comment stage of ratification before becoming (when ratified) an official public standard known as AES70.
OCA (Open Control Architecture) is an open control and monitoring standard for professional audio and AV media network devices. OCA is not itself a media transport, nor a means of programming a network device or system control or generating a user interface.
From a single device and controller to networks with almost any number of devices and multiple controllers, OCA provides for high speed, low cost, robust system control and monitoring of devices from different manufacturers. OCA can be used in conjunction with any available transport protocol (Dante, AVB, AES67, Cobranet, etc.).
Offering interoperability across different media transports and various devices, it enables new levels of complex system integration (and options as to how and where network devices can be deployed). The architecture operates on commodity Ethernet networking hardware or via standard 802.11wi-fi.
OCA is available free of charge to manufactures, system integrators and designers, to implement with their own and third party network devices, as they require.
At AES, OCA Alliance members have collaborated to illustrate the power and flexibility of OCA across all ranges of applications, large and small. The alliance demonstrates the OCA Microdemo, a full-features implementation of OCA running on a compact and lightweight reference design.
This implementation is ideal for compact devices such as wall controllers or hardware designs where software and hardware resources are limited. Part of the demo shows the multi-controller benefits of OCA, as hardware from multiple manufacturers are controlled simultaneously from the OCA Microdemo hardware, an iPad application, and a Chrome browser-based GUI, alongside native manufacturer control interfaces.
OCA Alliance is also announcing its latest new member, Atlas Sound, LP/Innovative Electronic Designs, LLC (Atlas IED).
The current members of the alliance are Attero Tech, Audinate, Bittner Audio, Bosch Communications Systems, d&b audiotechnik, Focusrite, Harman Professional Group, LOUD Technologies Inc., PreSonus, RCF, Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup, TC Group and Yamaha Commercial Audio.
