Is AVB/MILAN Getting There?

With the recent announcement from AVID that their Venue S6L now boasts MILAN certified connectivity via the new MLN-192 option card, is the prospect of a meaningful end-to-end MILAN signal chain as it relates to a live gig getting closer?

The missing ingredient at the moment is a MILAN certified radio mic. I wonder if it will be Sennheiser or Shure who will be the first to offer one.

Thanks to Neutrik's MINEA module (pictured), manufacturers who want to add AVB/MILAN to their products can do so more easily than by having to formulate a home-grown solution. The question is how many of them will do so?

AVB has been declared dead or insignificant in terms of pro audio many times by pundits and commentators over the years, yet its ghost refuses to go quietly; is MILAN just the most recent apparition?

Largely comprised of major loudspeaker heavyweights like Meyer, L-Acoustics and D&B, MILAN defines an agreed-upon implementation of AVB so that the intricacies around device compatibility are removed.

The idea is that in much the same way as the Wi-Fi alliance logo on a product would signify compatibility with other products bearing the same, certification will guarantee interoperability of MILAN audio devices.

I think it's a positive move and listening to the various stakeholders talk about why it came about, even though there are other well established and larger ecosystems available, raises some compelling arguments.

Let's take a look at the two main ones, as I see it, in more detail.

1) Pushing the envelope of what's possible:

Getting audio to and from over the network has been a "thing" now for a while; it's tried, tested and established, so what's the problem?

According to the proponents of MILAN, things may well be fine now, but what about in ten, twenty years?

"Trying to figure out what we might need in the future was an important consideration before we started down this path,"

says Richard Bugg of Meyer Sound

"so that we're not just taking what will work today and is acceptable today, but it also gives us some room to grow on the technology side."

Of the options available now, apparently, AVB is the only one that addresses these concerns. Only the manufacturers know what kind of products they have planned and what will and won't work in those use cases. Interestingly, I would have thought that an audio networking technology that doesn't include the possibility of being routable (in an IP sense) could be considered limiting, especially when people are constantly trying to push the boundaries of how far they can span their networks.

2) Non-proprietary technology:

Manufacturers seem to be keen to get away from a business model whereby they're having to license someone elses' technology to participate in the audio networking landscape. The argument is that if some other entity holds all the cards in that respect, it limits your agility and innovation as you're waiting for them to come forth with the new developments. It's also not without financial costs and other implications.

This seems like a pretty fair position for manufacturers to take. It may have been different when audio networking was fairly new; it was probably easier to include a pre-packaged technology rather than risk an investment in research and development to grow your own. Now that the concept and market desire for the technology has been clearly demonstrated, I'm not surprised that attitudes to the initial business model have changed.

Thinking about parallels from the IT world, arrangements like this can quite often turn sour. Usually, it's because the controlling entity begins to demand too much from their licensees. This doesn't always come in the form of a financial burden either. I've read stories of companies having to agree about sharing their research and development plans with the mothership if they want higher, earlier, more exclusive access to technology. For some, this is a step too far.

In other cases, the technology provider starts to pursue a different vertical that might offer a bigger slice of the pie to their solution and this can be to the detriment of the OEMs in the original industry.

I don't know if any of those factors are in play when it comes to the desire to move to a more open standard, but they certainly become less of a concern. This is especially true since no one can predict which company may be bought-out or merge with whom and where that may leave you as an equipment maker.

Dante Spoken Everywhere

I've not mentioned Audinate up till now, but it seems to me that whenever this subject comes up we all sense deep down that the "other" proprietary solutions being referred to are probably Dante.

I'm a fan of audio networking, I look at them all. RH Consulting's annual roundup of network audio products is always insightful and this year MILAN features on there for the 2nd year. If you were to look at the numbers alone, you might be forgiven for wondering if it's even worth consideration.

AVB has been one of those protocols where the next big thing is always just beyond the horizon; the next iteration will have this and that feature, a new development will address past shortcomings and so on and so on. With MILAN, it feels like AVB may have turned a significant corner and seems like there is a coherent vision of what it's trying to achieve.

You know what would be a coup though? If Audinate started to produce MILAN certified cards in the same way that it does for Dante. If they then took their expertise at providing device discovery and connection and wove MILAN into Dante Controller. That would be one less pane of glass at least. Is that heresy?

Dante would become a word we use for how things are connected like XLR or fibre. It may be referring to full-fat L3 Dante or it could be L2 MILAN, the interface would be the same. And since Audinate is now getting into the business of transporting video, AVB is not a bad bedfellow to have for that.

If it happens, you heard it here first! What are your thoughts?