IEC 60958-1:2004 describes a serial, uni-directional, self-clocking interface for the interconnection of digital audio equipment for consumer and professional applications. It specifies the basic structure of the interface. Separate documents define items specific to particular applications. The interface is primarily intended to carry monophonic or stereophonic programmes, encoded using linear PCM and with a resolution of up to 24 bits per sample. This second edition of IEC 60958-1 cancels and replaces the first edition published in 1999 and constitutes a technical revision. The major changes are:
- Annex B has been added to explain the definition given in 5.3 with relation of the families of the IEC 60958 series.
- Clause 5.3 is also added to this description.
- Annex C has been added to explain the relationship of the IEC 60958 series families.
- Annex D has been added as an explanation for a data transmission other than linear PCM.
- Subclause 5.4 has been added to define category code appliance. This bilingual version (2013-07) corresponds to the monolingual English version, published in 2004-03.