"Audio can be inserted in the down-stream," explained Digigram's Frank Siedel, "and the last device in the network sends every channel inserted back to the Primary Master device - the first in the network. From this up-stream, audio can be extracted from the network. Previously, we used the whole bandwidth of a 100Mb Ethernet to go one way. However, it's a full duplex network and we've now exploited this."
Only for those who don't need the 'star' configuration of a network, that is: bi-directional EtherSound only works in a daisy-chain. Naturally, star configurations have multiple end-points, all of which would fire the audio back to the Primary Master. But it's good news for both signal processing and conferencing system manufacturers, who need full I/O to share the signal between different devices. Other announcements were the ES8mic unit, adding a mic pre-amp to the insert point of the network; and the more cost-effective ES2out unit for stereo-only applications.
