In this article James Richmond shares his product of 2021, the audio networking solution, Dante.
When asked to write an article about my most favourite or most used product of the year several products came to mind. Firstly the mighty Trinnov MC8 which undoubtedly has had the most dramatic impact to my studio in terms of sound quality. Or I could have once again chosen the Avid MTRX audio interface, as I did last year, as it continues to be utterly brilliant.
Instead, and no disrespect to those excellent pieces of technology, I’m going to choose the audio networking solution Dante.
What It Does
Dante allows me to greatly and easily expand, and connect different audio devices in my studio in a way that was not possible before as well as route audio with a degree of flexibility that means I will probably never go back to the way I used to work. Dante essentially takes small pieces of digital audio and ‘packetises’ it, meaning that small chunks of audio are sent from one Dante device to another. Previously, when I wanted to send audio from one destination to another I would have to use long analogue audio runs or use expensive digital cables.
Dante works using relatively cheap ethernet cables and its capabilities vastly exceed the requirements of most recording environments.
A single ethernet connection on a gigabit switch can carry 512x512 channels over standard Cat5e cables which can be bought cheaply and easily.
My much more modest 64x64 channels of audio to and from Pro Tool plus another 64x64 channels to a native DAW such as Logic or Nuendo means I never run out of capacity in my network. Even on a converged network where data, voice and video are all provisioned on the same network
I won’t go into detail about the specifics of my network architecture, I’ve covered this in other articles. Instead here are some specific aspects of Dante that I love.
1. Ease of Cabling.
When I want to add more channel capability I can simply purchase a new device, be it a computer running Dante Virtual Soundcard or any device with Dante, plug it into the network switch, configure and route the audio. It is really that simple.
The studio is semi-detached from the rest of the house, and around 30-40m from the wired internet connection. I sometimes use rooms in the house as ad-hoc live rooms so running analogue tie lines would have been quite a lot of expense and hassle. With Dante a single ethernet cable (or two for redundancy) give me more channel capability than I could potentially use with a small number of performers. I could mic up an entire orchestra if I had the space for them (I don’t). Also, devices don’t need to be physically close to each other in order for them to be connected. Anything on the network can see anything else on the network. It is brilliant.
2. Adding Devices
When I want to add more channel capability I can simply purchase a new device, be it a computer running Dante Virtual Soundcard or any device with Dante, plug it into the network switch, configure and route the audio. It is really that simple.
3. Sharing Devices
I recently purchased an Eventide H9000 effects processor which has 32 channels of IO over Dante. I can therefore share the Eventide’s processing power amongst a variety of different computers that I have in my studio, even a computer that doesn’t have an audio card attached, because any computer running Dante Virtual Soundcard is seen on the network and can be used. I was also able to relocate the slightly noisy H9000 to a different room away from the control room.
4. Common Clocking
Another advantage of Dante is it is very easy for all the devices on the Dante network to follow a preferred leader (essentially a ‘master clock’. I don’t have to worry about BNC cables or word clock topology, all the settings are done in Dante Controller or on the individual devices themselves.
5. Signal Routing
This is my favourite aspect of Dante and one I have described in several articles.
Something to remember about Dante is you can send a transmitter (think ‘source’) to multiple receivers at once (think ‘destination’). This has a variety of different uses but the one I use the most is to send any sources such as microphone preamps, synthesisers, guitar processor and effects unit outputs to multiple inputs, for instance Pro Tools inputs and Logic or Nuendo inputs. This allows for parity between different workstations, meaning that input 3/4 on both application is my stereo modular input, input 5/6 is the Fractal Axe FX III. It is a real time saver.
6. Support For PoE.
Another fantastic aspect of Dante is the ability for different devices to be powered by ethernet. I find this particularly helpful for headphone amplifiers such as the Focusrite AM2. No more hunting around for wall warts, just a single cable to attach the device to network and to power it.
Downsides
No technology is perfect of course, and there are a couple of issues I’d like to mention.
Clocking: Sample Rates
Having a common clock between devices is very helpful except when using native app where a session or audio file is in a different sample rate to the sample rate of the preferred leader, in my case the Avid MTRX. This sample rate mismatch means you won’t hear any audio from the device or application with the different sample rate.
Several times I’ve gone to hit play only to hear nothing and then spend a minute or two (or… 15) trying to figure out what went wrong. Several Dante devices will do SRC on input, which is my current work around- use the AES inputs in a Focusrite A16R to resample whatever the UA Apollo X8 outputs to those inputs.
Signal routing: multiple receives are not possible.
As helpful as it is to be able to send a source to multiple destinations it is not possible, nor do I believe it ever will be, to have a destination receive multiple sources. The use case for this would be, in my studio, to be able to have my analogue outboard which is connected to a various different Dante converters, to be able to be accessed by the Pro Tools and Native IO. The outputs of the outboard can be sent to multiple places but the inputs cannot receive outputs from both Pro Tools (Digilink on the MTRX) and Logic/Nuendo (Focusrite Rednet PCIER card).
I can, of course, go into Dante Controller and reroute the IO to allow this, which is currently what I do, but he rule with Dante is a source can be sent to multiple destinations but a destination cannot receive multiple sources.
Conclusion
I’ve been using Dante for the last five or six years and it is impossible to overstate just how much it impacts my day to day studio life. The flexibility and capability enshrined in Dante as an audio routing and distribution system is simply fantastic. I’m pretty confident I’ll be using Dante for the foreseeable future.