A service architecture for scalable distributed audio

Present day personal and home hi-fi products are designed to work independently. In the near future these devices will have increased networking capabilities. This connectivity will enable a large number of audio/video (A/V) sources such as CD’s, DVD’s, digital libraries and internet broadcasts to be linked with A/V sinks such as active loudspeakers, recorders and home internet gateways. This paper introduces a service-based, networked multimedia architecture that facilitates the advertisement, discovery and connectivity of audio source and sink services. This architecture provides a scalable and flexible platform for implementing distributed audio environments that supports many file formats and transport protocols.