You can find products here using our app and by using an in-app purchase you can download the entire dataset into a spreadsheet.
So here are the scores for January 2016:
First, lets look at how many manufacturers have licensed each protocol. Note that just because someone is a licensee doesn’t mean that they will ever ship a product using that protocol.
Note that for AVB we have only counted manufacturers in the ‘Pro AV’ market. We have excluded those in automotive, consumer and industrial as they are not relevant to our industry.
Dante now has 275 manufacturers signed up, RAVENNA 45 and AVnu 23 down from a peak of 29.
Count of products
There are a total of 1155 networked products, though that figure is changing all the time. Many product have the option to support more than one protocol.
351 products support CobraNet
618 products support Dante
78 products support EtherSound
11 products are AVnu AVB certified and a further 81 use AVB technology
97 products support Ravenna
Counting products is boring and time-consuming. Our data will never be perfect. Some manufacturers information is very poor and products are being released and discontinued all the time. We think however that this is a pretty good indicator and accurate to just a few percent.
Whilst wanting to keep the year by year comparison accurate, we’ve made some other changes. There are two new product categories: ‘other’ and ‘input panels’.
Other, rather obviously, is for devices that don’t fit elsewhere. One of the categories was ‘transport’ which applied to any item that put audio on or off the network. However this was encompassing a lot of devices. So we’ve added ‘input plates’ which is for small low input devices that one might typically wall mount. The Transport category remains for larger input/output boxes
As we mentioned every time we do this, we set out some rules for counting devices as this proved not to be as easy as we thought. When is a product a product? When is something a different product? The consensus is that we are being fair but we are always happy to discuss.
These are the rules we set out:
• We have investigated products that appear to be shipping. It’s sometimes difficult to see if products are discontinued or if they are yet on the market. We have done what we can to verify whether each product is available for purchase
• We have included every SKU of a product. If a company sells a 2 x 600W amplifier and a 2 x 1200W amplifier they are counted as two products because they would have a different use
• Where the same product is available to purchase in a variety of card configurations such as a processor that is 16 in 16 out, 8 in 24 out, 24 in 8 out etc. This is counted as one product as the overall channel count is the same
• Where a similar product is available in different models 8 in 8 out, 12 in 12 out, 16 in 16 out, or a mixer with different input channel counts then these are counted as separate products as they would have a different use
• We have not included hacks, circuit boards, OEM kits or something that it not an actual product sold on its own or, at a user level, allows a product to become networked. However details of these items are included in our app to assist manufacturers wishing to adopt audio networking into their products
• We have included hardware interface cards that fit into products just enables an actual product to become networked. Such a card is counted as one product even though it can support countless models of PC. This is the main reason why our numbers are different to those published by Audinate as they include interface cards in their totals
• A software driver or program that enables a Mac or PC to support a particular network protocol is counted as one product
• Where a manufacturer’s network interface card fits into many audio products we have counted each shipping product, because that interface allows the product to become a networked audio device
Manufacturer activity
The size of the ecosystem
8 manufacturers actually ship products that are AVB certified
39 manufacturers actually ship products with Cobranet
108 manufacturers actually ship products with Dante
12 manufacturers actually ship products with Ethersound
12 manufacturers actually ship products with Ravenna
The future
We plan to continue doing this survey. In the next update we will probably drop Ethersound. We will also concentrate more on researching discontinued products so we have a better idea of what is actually shipping. Manufacturers must let us know about products at least once in 36 months or we will assume that the product is discontinued.
Our app
In order to help people specify networked audio products we have released an iOS app allowing you to search for ‘Dante amplifier’ or ‘Cobranet Mixer’. You can build shopping lists of equipment and export them. We’ve even included data on a number of proprietary protocols and you can also search for AES compliant devices.
As mentioned above those who want a fuller market overview you can do an in-app purchase for complete downloads of product or protocol categories. Since our database is changing all the time you can update the app’s data at any time.
Manufacturers can submit or correct product information by contacting us at: info@rhconsulting.uk
Buying our app and especially buying the in-app purchase directly helps pay for this research. If you find this information useful then your support is appreciated to help sustain it.