AES3-Am.6-2008 Amendment 6 to AES3-2003

A new document, AES3-Am.6-2008 Amendment 6 to AES3, AES standard for digital audio engineering - Serial transmission format for two-channel linearly represented digital audio data has been published 2008-11-12.

The "minimum" implementation of Channel Status was included in the original AES3 specification to allow implementers to reduce the complexity of transmitting interfaces. Its use has always been discouraged, and in the context of current electronics hardware the complexity saving compared to the Standard implementation is not significant. Moreover, it adds complexity to receivers by requiring them to recognize a special case which does not have a correct CRC in byte 23, and in practice many receivers do not recognize it and flag a CRC error.

This Amendment withdraws the "minimum" implementation of Channel Status. Thus transmitters that use it will no longer conform to AES3, but the practice of insisting on a correct CRC in receivers now will conform.

This Amendment also adds a code point to byte 1, bits 4 to 7, to support the carriage of MIDI data in the user bits as specified in IEC 62537 (digital interface for loudspeakers).