With all due respect, suggesting that Wheatstone license Livewire technology and jump on a 100 megabit bandwagon is evidence of a gross misunderstanding of the technology.
With all due respect Scott, you may want to do a bit more homework before you attempt to tell people about Livewire. I wouldn't want to think you are deliberately misrepresenting us here.
Livewire works on all full duplex Ethernet connections, yes including gigabit. If a device can produce or consume more than a few dozen streams, then we use gigabit. Our Axia consoles for example, have a mixture of 100BT ports and gigabit ports on the back to support various device types and network configurations. Our DSP mix engine platforms use gigabit since the number of streams can scale up to hundreds in certain applications. We use the proper port size for the job. But there is no penalty in having a smaller I/O device use a port with less bandwidth, your company's marketing claims about "increased reliability" to the contrary.
Here's one way to think about this. Consider a Livewire audio I/O node (or a blade in the Wheatstone vernacular). The device is 8 inputs and 8 outputs. Since the node owns the switch port into which it is plugged, i.e., no other devices share that port, then we know exactly how much bandwidth this device will always use: under 64mbps. The device cannot accidentally or via user misconfiguration suddenly become a 20x20 device. It is always 8x8. The Wheatstone argument is that 64mbps on a 1000mbps link is somehow more effective than 64mbps on a 100mbps link.
There are times when a larger pipe is desireable such as when a device (like a console mix engine) can consume or produce more streams. But of course, Livewire is agnostic to port size. So you put the correct port on the device given the application, either 100BT or Gigabit.
If we explore the Betamax analogy, it is quite apt in some ways. WheatNet-IP has distinct technical advantages over its competitors, just as the Betamax format did. The difference is that Betamax died because Sony demanded exorbitant licensing fees to use its technology, while the WheatNet-IP protocol is made available to any manufacturer who wishes to use it with no licensing fees and no hassles.
There you go again, Scott. You are implying that Livewire requires exorbitant licensing fees. Not true. Livewire is available to anyone who wishes to use it for a one-time license fee of $500. This fee gives the partner access to all of our intellectual property, including our reference designs, firmware, software and support. They can then sell as many Livewire-equipped devices as they wish, dozens, hundreds, thousands without any additional fee. Ever. Doesn't sound so onerous to me. But I'll tell you what. If Wheatstone wants to license Livewire, I'll gladly waive the fee for you guys since you consider it so exorbitant. By the way, quite a few companies are making Livewire-compatible products:
http://axiaaudio.com/partners
Another free solution is Ravenna. They don't even charge the $500 one-time fee. I like the fee because it covers some of our costs to establish the license agreement (yeah our lawyers are expensive), but our friends at Lawo just eat the cost and sign up Ravenna partners for free. So I'm having a hard time seeing how our "exorbitant licensing fees" are going to make us the new Betamax.
Distributed intelligence,
Your "distributed intelligence" is an application idea, not an audio protocol. This is easily done with Livewire devices and Ravenna devices too. All device configuration can be shared and updated via TCP/IP communication over the same network carrying the audio. Yes, I know you guys have coined a clever marketing name for it, the "smart" network, but your point is that Livewire doesn't do this, which is of course, nonsense.
higher throughput,
I think we've addressed this, but to reiterate, Livewire uses gigabit and 100BT both. Devices that need higher bandwidth use gigabit. Devices that don't, use 100BT. If a broadcaster believes that 64mbps will arrive sooner or somehow more reliably on a gigabit connection versus a 100BT connection, then I guess you win. However, keep in mind that this is only our implementation on Axia devices. It has nothing to do with Livewire. Livewire is on gigabit and if a partner wished to make all of their products gigabit-only, they can do so. So if your point is that you would be "giving this up" with Livewire, it is not true.
simpler configuration,
Pretty subjective, but again, it is an application issue, not an audio protocol issue. Are Wheatstone devices easier to configure than Axia devices? In your opinion, yes. But this has nothing to do with Livewire. Livewire is the audio protocol allowing devices to work together on the network. The configuration of those devices is something left to the partner companies.
Ah, but perhaps this is your point here. Because Wheatstone has so few partners, you speak of the Wheatnet protocol and Wheatstone devices interchangeably. And you have some consistency in the way you configure your devices and you think that translates to simplified system design. Good for you I guess. But remember, Livewire has more than 50 Livewire-compatible products/devices that work natively on our network without requiring audio nodes (or blades). And now we have interoperability with Ravenna which adds another 20 or so products/devices to the network.
So if you are saying that one of our partners has made their device difficult to configure and you are trying to make that an argument against Livewire, then I see your point. But how is this different from something like HDMI. I use it to connect my Blu-Ray player to my TV. Is it HDMI's fault that the TV remote control has a zillion buttons on it and is hard to confgure? No, this is unrelated to HDMI. The same is true for Livewire. We created a protocol to allow different products from different companies to work together on the same network. We aren't trying to tell those companies how to run their businesses!
full implementation of IGMP including group pruning,
As does Livewire.
logic at each BLADE,
Again, what does this have to do with Livewire? This is a design choice when building a device. You tell the original poster that you won't use Livewire because your tech is superior and then you proceed to talk about products rather than tech.
selectable sample rates --
Hey, you got one right! Livewire does not support multiple sample rates. Ravenna does however. So if that floats your boat, you could go that route. We like the idea of a single network sample rate to make it easier to use and configure the devices, but that was a choice we made when creating the protocol. It's not really a "technical limitation" per se, and others including Ravenna have chosen to allow multiple rates.
all of these represent areas where WheatNet-IP stands out from competing technologies. Giving up those advantages to conform with a competing technology would be short-sighted, at best.
Well, here's where we really diverge. You call Livewire a "competing technology." Which is why the original poster is not going to receive a satisfactory answer from you. His request was some kind of "standard" which would allow multiple devices from multiple manufacturers to work together. And I completely agree with him. Now that we've gotten past some of the disinformation about Livewire, let me explain where we're going with all of this.
As Mr. Foti pointed out, Livewire and Ravenna have recently partnered to allow for interoperability. Why would we do this with a "competing technology" to use your term? Because competing using network protocols is short-sighted, at best! Which is better for the broadcaster? A super duper proprietary protocol which is supported by very few partners and so requires translation devices (blades) to connect to nearly everything? Sure, that's better for you because you get to sell the broadcaster more stuff! But we think it's better for the broadcaster that there are more devices on the network that can speak natively with each other. Our partnership with Ravenna pushes the number of compatible devices up to more than 70. The result: simpler cheaper systems integration with the *true* benefits of IP-Audio being realized.
And we're not done yet. Telos is a sponsoring member of the AES-X192 committee working toward the establishment of an AES standard for IP-Audio networks. While you say that "WheatNet-IP stands out from competing technologies" we are working hard to merge together the best ideas from competing technologies into a single, industry-accepted standard for everyone.
I did notice that Wheatstone just recently joined the workgroup and I am pleased to welcome you! I would love to see our products all sharing the same network someday. Yes, we will still compete. But let's compete on features and approaches that give the customers choices. When we compete on network protocols, the customer has more limited choices. And in the long run, making our customers happy is what pays all of our paychecks.
Mike Dosch
Axia Audio
