Yamaha, whose membership had been pending due to internal proceedings at the time of the original alliance announcement, becomes the 9th full member of OCA Alliance.
Developed recently by Bosch Communications Systems, OCA is descended from AES-24, a system control protocol developed by the Audio Engineering Society in the 1990s.
The OCA Alliance formed to standardize an Open Control Architecture (OCA) for a wide interoperability of professional audio equipment. Since its formation in June this year the members have been working towards a final technical definition of OCA.
Like all the other members, Yamaha was approached by Bosch, the initiator of the OCA Alliance, to discuss how to overcome the challenge of interoperability in the professional audio market. ‘We are glad to now be able to join this alliance, with which we were in close communications from the very beginning’, adds Terry Holton, Yamaha senior manager R&D centre, London.
The Open Control Architecture is not meant to be a media transport technology and not to replace evolving standards such as AVB. Instead, it is intended to complement these by providing a reliable and rich system control environment. It hopes to be a flexible and robust standard covering the entire range of future professional media equipment, ranging from the smallest to large-scale applications.
The goal is to create an open public standard for professional media network systems. Phase one, completion of technical documents and transfer of the results to an accredited public standards organisation, will be restricted to the full members of OCA. Other interested companies are welcomed to join as observers and will be able to join as active members in the second phase of the standardisation process.
The current focus of OCA is on audio systems. However, the orderly expansion of OCA to over control of video devices is expected to be a straightforward matter.
The OCA definition has three parts:
- An Architectural Framework, designated as OCF. OCF defines the set of structures and mechanisms upon which the rest of OCA rest.
- A Class Structure, designated as OCC. OCC is object-oriented. It is an expandable, evolvable hierarchical structure which defines OCA's repertoire of control functions.
- A suite of Protocol Definitions, designated as OCP.1, OCP.2, et cetera. Each protocol definition describes an implementation of OCA for a particular network type. At present, only OCP.1 exists. It describes the implementation of OCA for standard TCP/IP networks. Future protocol definitions will be created for USB and other interconnection methods.
These levels are not protocol layers: they are simply sets of specifications upon which other specifications depend.
The members of the OCA Alliance are
- Bosch Communications Systems
- d&b audiotechnik GmbH
- Duran Audio
- LOUD Technologies Inc
- Media Technology Systems
- PreSonus
- Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup
- TC Group
- Yamaha Corporation
Go OCA Alliance