STANDARDS COME AND GO, but when something comes along that’s picking up widespread support in the consumer, automotive and pro audio markets, and sponsored by well-known names such as Broadcom, Cisco, Harman, Intel, Samsung, Xilinx, Analog Devices, Applied Micro, Audinate, Avid, Barco, Biamp, Meyer, Shure, Sennheiser, and others, you gotta take notice.

Founded just a year ago—and celebrating its first birthday at InfoComm—the AVnu Alliance is dedicated to advancing pro-quality audio video by promoting IEEE 802.1 Audio/Video Bridging (AVB) standards over various networking link-layers. AVnu promotes the benefits of AVB technologies and will create compliance test procedures and processes that insure AVB interoperability of networked A/V devices, with the goal of better A/V experiences for end users. For anyone involved in the installation/manufacturing/sales/distribution/operation of A/V products—meaning everybody in our industry—AVnu is a good thing. more

FEW MAJOR COMPANIES IN PRO AUDIO are family owned—among these, examples such as Meyer Sound, Peavey and Sennheiser come to mind. Yet in such cases, each of these companies has managed to retain a close-knit family atmosphere among those who work at the company. So it is with great sadness that I heard the news about Sennheiser founder Dr. Fritz Sennheiser, who passed away just a few days after his 98th birthday.

Dr. Fritz Sennheiser
Born in Berlin on May 9, 1912, Fritz Sennheiser’s father wanted him to study landscape architecture, but with the 1929 stock market crash, the 17-year-old saw little future in landscaping during those perilous times and instead entered the electrical engineering/telecommunications program at Berlin’s Technical University. After attaining his PhD, World War II broke out and Dr. Sennheiser continued his research, heading the Institute for Radio Frequency Engineering and Electroacoustics in Hannover. more

OVER THE PAST COUPLE YEARS, the annual Frankfurt Musikmesse has grown considerably, now expanded with the companion ProLight+Sound convention, attracting some 2,340 exhibitors packed into 16 convention halls and nearly 110,000 visitors from 128 countries. The net effect is like going to a combination NAMM/InfoComm/AES/LDI and it’s as big as all four combined! It used to be just musical instruments—yes, it still has an entire exhibit hall of accordions—but is now a major showcase for pro audio and even contracting-related products. Want proof? Check out a few of these Musikmesse/PL+S debuts, representing some serious stuff—hardly kids stuff…

DiGiCo came on strong with its (www.digico.biz) SD9, a small-footprint 32-in, 16-out (expandable to 64×32) digital live console that can simultaneously record 56 channels directly to multitrack software or DAW. more