The Technical Standards Program of ESTA (Entertainment Services and Technology Association) has officially ratified the much-anticipated international communications standard ACN. ESTA is the non-profit trade association representing the North American entertainment technology industry. The next step, ANSI certification, is expected to be completed by the time of the LDI trade show in October. Like DMX, ACN allows equipment from different manufacturers to operate together and function seamlessly within the same control network. Unlike DMX, ACN works over Ethernet, using internet standards, greatly increasing opportunities for product innovation and performance.

"This August represents the 20th anniversary of the ratification of the DMX standard," says Dan Antonuk, chairman of the ACN Task Group and network products development manager for lighting manufacturer ETC. "Twenty years from now people will look back on the acceptance of the ACN suite of protocols in the same way - as a watershed moment for technical progress in our industry." 

Dan predicts that ACN will find its way well beyond lighting and into sound and multimedia control. "ACN allows control devices to discover the properties of new equipment on the fly. Every ACN device is able to provide a file that fully describes its capabilities to any lighting desk or controller. This file uses a structured fixture library format called DDL. This on-the-fly ability to adapt to new equipment makes ACN attractive in uses as far ranging as consumer electronics or industry-specific professional applications. It is also ideally suited for dynamic environments like audio mixing and video effects."

ACN has already arrived in lighting control systems and manufacturers, including, ETC are set to debut ACN enabled products this year in Las Vegas at LDI.