The OCA Alliance’s booth - H8 A11 - features a live demonstration of OCA control and monitoring across networked audio devices from different manufacturers, and will be a point of contact for manufacturers and audio professionals looking for information, or wishing to consult with experts from the OCA Alliance.
Activities to promote the OCA vision of a common remote control standard include the alliance Manufacturers’ Reception, at 18:00 on Wednesday 15 April on the Bosch Communications booth H8 A22. Leading technical and product specialists from the alliance will give a short presentation, followed by light refreshments and the opportunity to talk ‘one-on-one’ with OCA Alliance members.
d&b audiotechnik is launching its new D20 amplifier, a major OCA enabled product. d&b audiotechnik was among the first manufacturers to implement OCA commercially. The protocol is currently enabled on the d&b D80 amplifier and R1 remote control software; both of which have proven the OCA protocol in the field, on major music festivals, including Glastonbury, and international concert tours by artists like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and One Direction.
d&b audiotechnik product manager and chairman of the OCA Alliance marketing group, Marc Weber expands, “Feedback from our customers to the performance and reliability of OCA in the field has been universally enthusiastic. Now we are bringing OCA to a new set of applications. The next generation 4-channel D20 amplifier offers users the DSP power and field-proven user interfaces of the d&b flagship D80 amplifier, providing an ideal OCA enhanced solution for smaller loudspeaker systems and applications that don’t require such high sound pressure levels.”
“With the OCA protocol the d&b D20 amplifier already has onboard the potential to perform in the long term interoperability vision of the OCA Alliance. It is this vision that the OCA Alliance is actively promoting at Prolight+Sound. With more OCA enabled products to be released this year and the forthcoming ratification of the OCA protocol as an AES standard, 2015 will be an exciting year for OCA.”
About OCAOCA (Open Control Architecture) is an open control and monitoring standard for professional audio and AV media network devices. From a single device and controller to networks with almost any number of devices and multiple controllers, OCA provides for powerful, 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 manufacturers’ devices, it enables whole 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 802.11 Wi-Fi.
Control functionality allows system professionals to change and monitor all operating parameters of a network device, including the creation and deletion of signal paths, parameter adjustments for signal processing objects, network device firmware updates and management of access control. Control can also be limited to provide simpler ‘operator’ functionality; for instance, providing just level, mute, power on/off and fault indication.
AES project “AESX210” is currently working to render OCA into a ratified AES standard this year.
OCA is not itself a media transport, or a means of programming a network device or system control, or generating a user interface. 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.
www.oca-alliance.com
