This annual report is recognized as the benchmark for tracking trends in networked audio, to provide insights into the current state of the industry. The 11th installment of RH Consulting's renowned networking covers all the major protocols including Dante, Ravenna, AES67, AVB, Milan and others. Following the addition of video and control protocols in last year’s report, RHC has added IPMX and NDI (the dominating technology) and will further broaden the scope in the future.
The statistics show that the number of networked AV products on the market continues to grow, with the total number of products being shipped being charted at 5,219, from 552 different brands. This increase of over 1,000 from last year’s report seems to indicate that the industry is successfully rebounding from a rough spell of years caused by the pandemic. Dante once again cements its dominance in the Audio-over-IP (AoIP) sector, adding more products to the market than all other protocols combined and Ravenna continues a steady progress in second place, as the protocol of choice in the broadcast industry.
For audio applications, AES67 now appears in the lead with 3,921 compatible products (products that work across Dante, Ravenna, Livewire+, Wheatnet and a few that are ‘raw’ AES67 compatible). Of note, the report indicates that the vast majority of AES67 products achieve that compatibility using Dante. And Audinate dominates the industry with 3,714 Dante products, an order of magnitude more products and more manufacturers using the technology than anyone else. Over the past 12 months, 46 manufacturers shipped Dante products for the first time.
On the video side, the report shows that NDI (Network Device Interface, a royalty-free software specification developed by NewTek) is the dominating technology in use, with 387 products in the market (likely undercounted), while ST2110, the broadcast standard in video-over-IP, is growing fast. On the less demanding "audiovisual" applications, SDVoE continues to dominate over other industry efforts, while DanteAV and the first IPMX ‘ready’ products (the AV flavor of ST 2110) are now making an appearance.
"Video adoption over IP has been slower than audio due to bandwidth limitations allowing only a few video channels to pass, increasing bandwidth demands for improving video quality, and unsustainable single-manufacturer solutions," comments Roland Hemming, from RHC, on the Video over IP data. "We observed that many of the products are simply video encoders/decoders, which reminds us of the early days of AoIP."
"It’s reassuring to see that the number of products on the market continues to grow in the face of supply chain shortages," states Hemming. "The Video networking market is still in its infancy when compared to AoIP, but now that we have collated two years of data, we can begin to draw a line. NDI are currently leading the charge in this category in terms of overall manufacture and distribution and are also making the most concerted effort to embed this technology inside their products. We’re excited to see how this develops in the future as technologies improve."
A full breakdown of all the statistics and a comprehensive listing of all the protocols considered and how the data is compiled, is available with the report, which is now available online.
https://rhconsulting.uk/blog/networked-audio-products-2023/
