Audio over IP: The Shift You Can't Afford to Ignore
If you've been in broadcasting for more than a few years, you remember when routing audio meant physical patch bays, dedicated copper wiring runs, and calling the chief engineer every time something needed to change. It worked. It was tangible. You could trace a signal with your hands.
AoIP — Audio over Internet Protocol — changes that model fundamentally. And depending on where you sit in a broadcast facility, that either sounds exciting or deeply unsettling. This issue is for both camps.
So What Actually Is AoIP?
At its core, AoIP is the transmission of audio signals as data packets across a standard IP network — the same fundamental infrastructure that carries your email, your streaming video, and your VoIP phone calls. Instead of dedicated analog or digital audio wiring between every device, audio becomes data, and that data travels across a shared Ethernet network.
Think of it like this: traditional broadcast audio infrastructure is like a city built entirely on dedicated highways — one road per destination, purpose-built and unchangeable. AoIP is the interstate system — shared infrastructure where any vehicle can reach any destination, dynamically and efficiently.
That analogy only goes so far though. What makes AoIP genuinely powerful isn't just the shared medium — it's what that shared medium enables.
The Protocols You'll Hear About
AoIP isn't a single standard. It's a family of protocols, each with its own design philosophy and target use case. The three you'll encounter most in modern broadcast environments are:
Livewire+ — Developed by Telos Alliance, Livewire+ is a proprietary AoIP protocol widely deployed in radio broadcast facilities. It sends both audio and control data between all Livewire-capable devices (consoles, nodes, computers, 3rd party devices, etc.) using standard network switches. If you're in radio, there's a good chance Livewire+ is already somewhere in your facility.
Dante — Developed by Audinate, Dante is a widely deployed AoIP protocol in the broader professional audio world. You'll find it across live sound, installed AV, recording studios, and increasingly in broadcast environments. Like Livewire, Dante is proprietary — but its sheer market penetration means an enormous ecosystem of compatible devices from hundreds of manufacturers. In broadcast specifically, Dante often appears at the edges of a facility where broadcast-native gear meets production or AV equipment. Its ease of setup and broad hardware support make it a practical bridge between the broadcast world and the wider professional audio ecosystem.
AES67 — Over the past few years, several AoIP protocols have emerged, but AES67 allows them all talk to one another. Developed by the Audio Engineering Society, AES67 is referred to as the “interoperability protocol,” and it’s the standard that defines how AoIP devices from different manufacturers communicate with each other. It's the common language that allows a Lawo console to talk to a Dante-enabled device, or a Livewire+ system to hand off audio to a Wheatstone system. Modern deployments increasingly treat AES67 as the backbone.
SMPTE ST 2110 — More common in television and high-end production environments, ST 2110 extends the IP media transport concept beyond audio to include video and ancillary data as separate essence streams. If you're working in a facility that handles both broadcast audio and video production, this is the framework that ties it together.
These protocols aren't necessarily competitors — in a well-designed modern facility, you'll often see all three coexisting, with AES67 serving as the interoperability bridge between proprietary ecosystems.
What It Actually Changes in Your Facility
For the engineer, AoIP replaces static point-to-point wiring with dynamic, software-configurable routing. Adding a new audio source or destination no longer means running cable — it means configuring a device using a web GUI. Redundancy, previously expensive to build in hardware, becomes a network design problem with well-established solutions.
For the station manager or operations director, the implications are more strategic. AoIP infrastructure scales in ways that traditional audio wiring simply doesn't. Consolidating multiple studios onto shared network infrastructure reduces hardware footprint and long-term maintenance costs. Remote production — having talent or equipment in a different physical location contribute to a live broadcast — becomes a network latency problem rather than an infrastructure impossibility.
Neither of these outcomes is automatic. AoIP systems require competent network design, appropriate hardware selection, and staff that understands both the broadcast signal chain and the IP layer underneath it. Facilities that deploy AoIP without that foundation tend to have a bad time. Facilities that invest in that foundation tend to wonder how they ever operated without it.
Why This Matters Right Now
The broadcast industry's shift to IP infrastructure isn't a future trend — it's actively underway. Manufacturers have largely committed to IP-native product lines. New facility builds default to AoIP architecture. The installed base of legacy analog and TDM infrastructure is aging out.
Whether you're evaluating your first AoIP deployment, inheriting a system you didn't design, or trying to make sense of a vendor conversation that keeps referencing protocols you haven't worked with — understanding the fundamentals of AoIP is no longer optional for anyone serious about modern broadcast operations.
That's what Broadcasters Friend is here for. Each issue we'll go deeper — specific protocols, network design principles, gear worth knowing about, and real-world deployment considerations drawn from the field.
Welcome aboard.
— Broadcasters Friend newsletter.broadcastersfriend.com