Artel Video Systems, a world-class provider of innovative real-time multimedia delivery solutions, today announced that it has extended its suite of Quarra PTP Ethernet solutions to the professional audio market — a market that eventually must migrate to IP-based workflows just as other media markets are doing. For early adopters of audio over IP in pro audio, Quarra switches have increased ease of use, flexibility, reliability, and timing accuracy while booting up more quickly. These benefits make Quarra an essential part of the workflow as the trend reaches mainstream levels and as solutions grow more reliant on media-over-IP standards.

“We want to aid in the adoption of audio over IP, so we are aiming to create more awareness and comfort with the technology — especially within the individual contributor space,” said Rafael Fonseca, Vice President, Product Management at Artel. “This market will soon encounter a need to embrace the technology, and we believe Quarra has an edge over the competition due to its ease of use and fast boot times.”

As workflows in pro AV environments continue to move toward IP, the only available components in the future will be IP-native. By providing managed IP switches that are PTP-aware, Quarra helps users to start adopting good practices as it pertains to IT infrastructure in support of audio-over-IP workflows.

So far, the use cases for Quarra have fallen under the early-adoption category, where the technology is being used primarily to solve timing and synchronization problems in pro audio kits. For example, Recording Engineer and Founder of FiLO Classical Dave Rowel uses Quarra PTP-aware switches to stabilize traffic clocking and reduce drift to about 15 to 45 nanoseconds, which is well within the range of his RAVENNA-based real-time audio-over-IP system. Overall, Quarra helps him manage several bidirectional connections over varying distances and cable lengths, especially at gigs with 60-plus channels running at a typical speed of 192kHz.