Letter from Lee Ellison CEO
Dante’s Got You Covered! While it has been only three months since our last newsletter, Dante has been mushrooming into several new products.. At Pro Light and Sound in Frankfurt, eight of our OEM Partners launched, or announced 11 new Dante products. The adoption of new Dante enabled networked products continued to flourish at InfoComm 2012. One of the major announcements at the InfoComm conference was Shure’s launch of the ULXD 4D Dual- and Quad Channel Digital Wireless Receiver, the first Dante enable networkable wireless receiver. The Shure ULXD was a big success at the show, winning a Best of Show Award.
At ISE in February. Yamaha launched the stunning new CL Series consoles and RIO stage-boxes with integrated Dante. At Infocomm, Yamaha launched it new MTX5-D matrix mixer which also won a Best of Show award and their new line of Commercial Installed Products (CIS) including the MTX-V amplifiers. Now with Dante as the standard networking interface, users will be able to share audio and connect with all Yamaha CIS products, as well as other professional audio products on a digital audio network.
Lectrosonics introduced its new Dante breakout box in addition to the newly launched Lectrosonics ASPEN Dante network processor.
As a result of Dante’s fast moving adoption in the market, several other OEMs have announced new products adding Dante to their portfolios. Harman’s BSS Audio announced the adoption of Dante to its Soundweb™ London family of digital signal processors. Crest Audio® introduced the NX Dante-8™ Nexsys® control module which works in tandem with the new Crest Audio CKd™ and Ci™ Series of intelligent power amplifiers,
We are delighted to welcome Attero Tech to our list of qualified authorized implementers. This provides our OEM customers another path to outsource the integration of Dante into their products and complements our geographic coverage with ZP Engineering.
Dante continues to become the media networking solution of choice becomes of its simplicity, and scalability, and the large number of Dante interoperable products. Some of the world’s largest installations and events deployed Dante this year, including the Queen’s Jubilee celebration (See “Showcasing Dante “below).
It’s easy to understand why Pro AV Manufacturers and end users alike are saying that: Dante is Digital Media Networking Perfected!
In The News
Shure Partners with Audinate
Shure and Audinate have announced a licensing agreement for Audinate’s Dante™ digital audio networking technology.
Lectrosonics Introduces ASPEN Dante Network Processor
2x32 channel Plug 'N Play Network Audio Transport
Meeting the demand for reliable network audio transport, Lectrosonics has developed the SPNDNT network processor to expand the ASPEN digital matrix processor family.
Audinate Adds Attero Tech as Authorized System Implementer
Attero Tech, an AV networking specialist, and Audinate, the inventors of the award winning Dante™ media networking solution, announced today that Attero Tech is now an official Audinate Authorized Implementer for Dante technology.
Crest Audio® Introduces NX Dante-8™ Nexsys® Control Module
Companion to new Crest Audio CKd™ Series networkable power amplifiers
Crest Audio® proudly announces the new Nx Dante-8™ NexSys® control module, which works in tandem with the new Crest Audio CKd™ and Ci™ Series of intelligent power amplifiers to support Crest NexSys 5 and Peavey® MediaMatrix® NWare™ audio software programs.
HARMAN’s BSS Audio Brings Dante™ to Soundweb™ London With Introduction of BLU-806 and BLU-326 Processors
HARMAN’s BSS Audio today announced the introduction of Dante™ functionality to its acclaimed Soundweb London family of digital signal processors with the addition of two Soundweb London devices.
Software Bulletin: Update Your Dante Controller Software
Dante Controller 3.2.8 has been released for both Windows and Mac
What's new in 3.2.8
- For supported devices, manufacturer, product type and product version are now displayed in the Device View > Status tab under 'Device Information'. Dante-specific information (Dante device type, software and firmware versions) are now displayed under 'Dante Information'.
- For certain devices, specialist[LE1] switching configurations are supported for the Ethernet ports. If you have one of these devices, the top panel in the Device View > Network Config tab will be titled 'Switch Configuration'. Please refer to the device manufacturer's user manual for more information.
- The 'Type' and 'Version' columns in the Device Status View have been renamed as 'Product Type' and 'Product Version'.
- Stability and performance improvements.
Educational Videos
We had great feedback about the series of short “Speed Draw” animations produced. This fun animation talks about Dante use cases.
Showcasing Dante
Audinate's Dante Networks the Queen's Diamond Jubilee
Not since Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee back in 1897, has Great Brittan celebrated a monarch's 60th anniversary. Last month, millions turned out each day to mark Queen Elizabeth's 60 years on the throne. Needless to say, an event of this magnitude required a reliable and flexible networking transport, and Audinate's award winning digital media networking technology Dante™ was chosen as the digital media network backbone for all the live sound events and festivities.
On Monday 4th June the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert played host to the world. Staged on the Queen Victoria Monument outside Buckingham Palace in London, the huge audience of over 500,000 spread from the gates of Buckingham Palace for nearly mile down the Mall, and into St. James’s Park
Audio production house, Britannia Row Productions, was responsible for all the live sound. Joshua Lloyd was the system designer who designed the sound system (that needed to be invisible) for the seated invited audience around the temporary stage constructed on the Queen Victoria Monument. “It was necessary to create a large distributed system to achieve this goal” comments Lloyd. “We used 24 stacks of Outline Butterfly loudspeakers for a total of 96 boxes, to create this complex system. Each stack of Butterfly’s were driven by a Lake LM series processor, and were all networked together using off-the-shelf Cisco switches over a standard IP network.
Dante Made It Easy
The mammoth sound system consisted of 100’s of cabinets and over 6.5km (4 miles) of fiber optic cabling. The task of managing this could have been overwhelming, but Audinate’s Dante media networking easily addressed the challenge to simplify and reduce the cabling infrastructure. “We pride ourselves on using the most appropriate technology for an application, and therefore have been using Dante for our loudspeaker signal distribution for several years.” said Lloyd. “I was able to concentrate upon keeping the engineers happy with the complex console setup, while delegating the simple cable laying operation to another team of people for the PA and video feeds that were carried over our fiber infrastructure, which saved doubling up on cabling and as well as saved time.”
When it came to finally routing the audio over the Dante network, the preconfigured system came up as programmed, and adding more elements to this was a simple point and click operation. Dante’s ability to pass audio information between equipment of different manufacturers simplified the event. A total of 48 Lake LM series processors were used on the distributed system at the Queen Victoria monument, the 8 delay towers in the Mall and the 4 PA towers in St. James’ Park.
Naturally a system of this size required a large matrix solution. Two Yamaha DME 64N units equipped with Dante-MY16-AUD networking cards were deployed, these in turn were connected to 6 XTA Dante Breakout boxes as well as the 48 LM series processors.
Lloyd concludes, “This system could not have worked on analog, as the distances involved were so great, and the interference from every kind of signal and power cabling would have seriously damaged the audio quality. Single mode fiber optic cabling was the only viable solution, and the sheer number of nodes required meant that using Dante Audio over IP was the simplest, most cost effective way to achieve this. “
Processional Day
The following day, Tuesday 5 June, the Jubilee concluded with the Procession of the Queen with a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral from Buckingham Palace, which was followed some hours later by the procession back to Buckingham Palace.
The finale to the Jubilee festivities once again took place at Buckingham Palace, with an estimated audience of between 700,000 and 1 million people attending. A quick overnight system configuration where the previous days “Backstage” area was set up for public access meant that all attending in the Mall and St. James’ park were able to take part in the proceedings.
Lloyd concludes, “Dante’s deterministic latency was invaluable in this application. It allowed us to calculate the many different delay and EQ settings for this system, which in turn allowed for the optimum audio experience for the audience.”
