It’s a software application that allows broadcasters and media organizations move audio in all major AoIP formats, including Ravenna, AES67 and ST 2110-30, between facilities and into the cloud over standard IP networks, including the public internet.
And, it has arrived courtesy of swXtch.io.
Introducing groundSwXtch for Audio over IP (AoIP), which does not require codec hardware nor does it need any reconfiguring of switches or routers to support multicast.
“By carrying audio in its native, uncompressed form end to end, groundSwXtch preserves bit-identical quality while removing the encode/decode latency, hardware cost and deployment complexity that come with traditional AoIP transport,” the company claims.
It explains:
For decades, broadcasters have relied on dedicated codec pairs to move audio between facilities: compress, transport over a standard connection, decode on arrival. groundSwXtch removes that step by carrying the existing multicast AoIP streams on a facility’s network across the connecting network (WAN, 5G or public internet) through a centrally managed software overlay. A lightweight application on standard hardware/servers or virtual machines forms the overlay and moves native AoIP traffic across existing IP infrastructure, including over switches and routers that were never configured for multicast routing. Broadcasters connect studios, production centers, remote facilities and data centers into one unified fabric without touching physical network hardware, with built-in packet protection for hybrid links including SMPTE ST 2022-7 hitless failover, and a single-pane view of every flow.
Thus, as groundSwXtch shares its core architecture with swXtch.io’s cloudSwXtch platform, the two can be paired to extend the same multicast fabric into the cloud – giving broadcasters one hybrid network spanning on-premises and cloud environments rather than separate ground and cloud workflows.
Brent Yates, CEO of sxXtch.io, comments, “For decades, the industry has focused on making audio codecs faster and more efficient. We took a different approach by asking whether broadcasters need codecs at all. If audio already exists as native AoIP and we provide an IP network that can transport it reliably, removing that encode-and-decode layer simplifies infrastructure, lowers costs and preserves the integrity of the original signal. groundSwXtch allows broadcasters to move audio exactly as it was created while making distributed production far easier to deploy and scale.”
