Description

I own a pair of Adam Audio A7V active studio monitor speakers. They have ethernet connectors that allow changing their settings remotely using the A Control software. From Windows :-( I couldn't find any open source alternative for Linux besides AES70.js library.

Goals

• Create a command-line tool for controlling the speakers.
• Python is the language of choice.
• Implement only a simple tool with the desired functionality rather than a full coverage of AES70 standard.

TODO

• ✅ discover the device
• ❌ get device manufacturer and model
• ✅ get serial number
• ✅ get description
• ✅ set description
• ✅ set mute
• ✅ set sleep
• ✅ set input (XRL (balanced), RCA (unbalanced))
• ✅ set room adaptation
  • bass (1, 0, -1, -2)
  • desk (0, -1, -2)
  • presence (1, 0, -1)
  • treble (1, 0, -1)
• ✅ set voicing (Pure, UNR, Ext)
• ❌ the Ext voicing enables the following extended functionality:
  • gain
  • equalizer bands
  • on/off
  • type
  • freq
  • q
  • gain
• ❌ udev rules to sleep/wakeup the speakers together with the sound card

Resources

• https://www.adam-audio.com/en/a-series/a7v/
• https://www.adam-audio.com/en/technology/a-control-remote-software/
• https://github.com/DeutscheSoft/AES70.js
• https://www.aes.org/publications/standards/search.cfm?docID=101 - paid
• https://www.aes.org/standards/webinars/AESStandardsWebinarSC0212L20220531.pdf
• https://ocaalliance.github.io/downloads/AES143%20Network%20track%20NA10%20-%20AES70%20Controller.pdf

Result

• The code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/dmach/pacontrol
• The command-line tool works fine and implements basic operations for controlling the speakers nearly as planned
• There are still couple things I need to implement later such as
  • querying and displaying all the details about the devices
  • setting up Ext voicing mode (it would be great to load room corrections exported from REW)
  • udev rules for sleeping the speakers when a sound card is turned off
  • packaging as RPM

Lessons learned

• Trying to understand the aes70 standard first wasn't the best idea. It is quite complex and and it hold me from writing any actual functionality for a while.
• Capturing packets and writing code that would simply reply them to achieve desired functionality would be a way better start.
• The original A Control software sometimes accepted the changes I made from the command-line and even changed the displayed value, but sometimes it was forcing the settings, making me think that my code doesn't work at all. I wasted several hours before I realized that.
• Also, some of the commands sometimes did not work when A Control was not running on the same network. Turning the speakers off and on again helped. Maybe I messed something up with sessions. Also caused several hours wasted.