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Dante Network Audio

Audinate’s Dante technology provides high performance digital media networking that meets the quality and performance requirements of professional live sound, AV installations, broadcast and recording systems.

Designed to fully exploit the capabilities of today and tomorrow’s networking equipment, Dante provides media transport mechanisms that eliminate many traditional audio network design restrictions. Dante makes it easy to set up robust, flexible digital audio networks with virtually unrestricted performance. A Dante network can be designed with mixed Gigabit and 100Mbps network speeds, simultaneously support audio with different sample rates and bit depths, and even allow the design of network zones with different latencies.

Dante is built on Internet Protocols — not just Ethernet. Because it uses standard IP over Ethernet, Dante is capable of running on inexpensive off-the-shelf computer networking hardware, and with the use of standard QoS can share installed networks with other data and computing traffic.

Dante provides sample-accurate synchronization and can deliver the very low latency required by professional audio. Dante’s network-centric, audio-independent approach to synchronization allows perfectly synchronized playout across different audio channels, devices and networks, even over multiple switch hops.

Dante makes networking a true plug-and-play process, allowing automatic device discovery and system configuration. Dante-enabled devices will automatically setup their network configuration and advertise themselves and their channels on the network, reducing complicated, error-prone set-up procedures. Instead of “magic numbers”, networked devices and their input and output signals can be named to make sense to the user.

Dante is not restricted to allowing configuration and transmission of audio channels. Dante also provides mechanisms to send or receive control and monitoring information across the Dante IP network, including equipment-specific messages and control specified and developed by a particular manufacturer.

With its strong foundations and links to current and evolving network standards, Dante is able to deliver a level of future proofing otherwise unavailable in other types of digital audio transportation. Dante was designed for Gigabit networks from its inception, and Dante as it exists today already incorporates aspects of the emerging AVB networking standards. Continued evolution of its networking technology is an integral part of the Dante roadmap.

Dante technology is available in ready-to-implement hardware and software products, reference designs and development APIs.

For more information, please visit the Audinate website at www.audinate.com.

Features:

  • Based on existing IP based networking technology including IEEE 802.3 and UDP/IP.
  • Makes use of off-the-shelf Ethernet hardware.
  • Uses standard VoIP (Voice Over IP)-style QoS (Quality of Service) to integrate into existing networks.
  • Can combine Ethernet network speeds from 100 Mbit to 1 Gigabit.
  • Symetrix' implementation of digital audio is at 24-bit at a 48 kHz sample rate. Dante itself can mix sample rates and bit depths on the same network at the same time.
  • Symetrix' Dante implementation supports a network latency as low as 0.25 mS.
  • Device discovery, "plug and play" type operation between devices. Configuration is automatic.
  • Label based routing. Buses can be named.
  • Symetrix' Dante implementation is capable of (128) channels of audio, which are designated as (64) send channels and (64) receive channels.
  • One can network their PC or Mac directly with the Dante network using a Virtual Sound Card software available separately from Audinate.
  • At the time this document is written there are implications that Dante will be compatible with the emerging AVB technology.