Dante Virtual Sound card now supports OS X Yosemite.
https://www.audinate.com/about/news-activity/press/audinate-enhances-dante-virtual-soundcard-dante-controller

 Dante Via will appear as both ASIO and WDM drivers on a Windows PC.

Multicast is very efficient for one-to-many signal distribution, such as front-of-house to many amplifiers in a stadium. With multicast, a single stream of network packets is transmitted by the source and the packets are replicated by the network switches as they travel through the network. In networks that do not support controlled distribution of multicast (a common case), the multicast packets carrying the audio channels will flood throughout the network. Dante devices support IGMP snooping which avoids flooding and delivers the multicast audio packets only to devices that have requested those channels. For point-to-point connections between two Dante devices, multicast is not useful and is not recommended.

There are no current plans to support AVB for the Dante Virtual Soundcard.

No, but when the network is heavily loaded (e.g. with many audio channels or other traffic), additional QoS configuration may improve performance.

Dante licensees are able to configure the options that their product support. If a product does not support a specific feature, you should contact the manufacturer to determine the reason.

Dante Controller can be used for routing audio only, while the level of 3rd party integration achieved in SymNet Composer allows both audio routing and full control (at both design time and in real time) of all adjustable parameters for all interoperable products. One GUI, full control of all products.

This is the expected behavior. A computer or other network device will continue to ask for a DHCP address in case the lack of a DHCP server.

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Dante Via is expected to be available in Q1 of 2015.It will be sold on Audinate’s website when it is ready for commercial release. Dante Via final pricing has not yet been finalized.

IGMP Snooping settings are different for every manufacturer. I would suggest working with a network admin with specific experience or training on the particular brand or model of the switch. However, IGMP Snooping is not required for Dante, it is a network management tool that can be leveraged to optimize the network.

Solid State Logic has a product on the market that is an SDI to Dante de-embedder.

Dante Via is a separate product from Dante Virtual Soundcard, but it provides much of the same functionality, with the addition of more features.

Dante Via is an application that networks, routes and monitors all of your audio streams from your computer. It connects and combines internal and external microphones, speakers, applications and audio interfaces to each other and to the Dante network.

Unlike today’s world where your computer applications are locked and peripheral audio devices are limited to the short cables, Dante Via combines and connects synchronized audio to anywhere from anywhere over a standard IT network.

We are currently working at upgrading Dante Controller and Dante Virtual Soundcard to support Yosemite. It will be release as soon as all issues are completely resolved.

Thanks for the input for the feature request. We will pass this on to Product Management for consideration.

You can do this in SymNet Composer for any Dante channels routed through Symetrix hardware. You could also export them out through SymVue to be viewed on any PC with the SymVue application installed. The user with SymVue would only see the meters or have control of what you give them.

The PPM in clock health monitoring shows the offset from the center frequency of the device’s own clock to that of the Dante network master clock. It is unrelated to latency.

Dante devices are monitored by Dante Controller to establish the status of their clock synchronization with the Dante network master clock. There are two levels of monitoring: ‘passive’ and ‘active’. In passive mode, Dante Controller will report if a clock loses sync (or regains sync) with the master clock. In active mode, Dante Controller will also report if a clock is showing signs of instability. If a device clock is significantly unstable, it can lose sync with the master clock, which will result in the device being automatically muted.

Up-to-date brooklyn firmware is REQUIRED for this feature to work.

Symetrix Composer-based products will work with any other Dante product. We also support deeper integration and control for specific products from the following manufacturers:

• Ashly
• Attero Tech
• Audinate
• Audio-Technica
• CLOCKAUDIO
• Panasonic
• Powersoft
• Shure
• Stuart Audio
• Visionary Solutions

Network support for carrying the data to control adjustable parameters of any Dante-enabled device is already supported. Exposing this control to end users is the responsibility of the manufacturers of Dante equipment. In general, manufacturers will provide their own GUI software to adjust controllable parameters on their own products. The goal that Symetrix, Attero Tech, Stewart Audio, and Audio Technica have is to make control of all manufacturers’ products available in one GUI – in this case SymNet Composer. One GUI, full control of all products.

Thank you for your product improvement idea. We will put this into the product management queue.

Dante Controller and Dante Virtual Soundcard are available for both Mac and Windows.

Simple answer: yes, it is possible. Latency is configured per receiver and is not required to be a single value for the whole network. You can set the receive latency on the amplifiers to 1ms and the latency on 1Gbps devices to lower than 1ms.

We recommend using the new Dante Controller latency monitoring feature to confirm that it is safe to lower the latency in your 1Gbps network and/or to verify your latency headroom when you have done so.

A suggested approach is to use the Dante Controller latency monitoring feature to verify adequate network latency headroom and tune network latency. When designing a network, use of gigabit ethernet links and switches is recommended to reduce latency.

Unfortunately, at this time there is no Linux version of the Dante software.

Dante Via intra- computer routing will have some latency, but the actual value is not yet determined.

Dante has it’s own control and status protocols to optimize interoperability with all Dante enabled products. Dante licensees do create their own control interfaces that integrate with third party control protocols.

There are very few products available that require they be the clock master on a Dante network in order to properly function. In all cases, we encourage the manufacturers to enhance their products so that they allow the maximum flexibility in designing a system. It is never in the manufacturer’s interest to deliberately create a product lacking features that limit its functionality, or ability to work with other manufacturers.

There are several Dante-MADI bridge products that would allow you to sync a Dante network to a MADI clock, or vice-versa.

There is not currently a user-level control in Dante Controller, but we are continually developing new features to enhance Dante as a solution.  However, there are several widely used network security standards that can be used to secure a Dante network.

There are at least three options for converting analog audio at a local plate to Dante. You can use a product like the Attero Tech unDX2IO or unD3IO 2-gang Dante wall plates. These devices are PoE powered and move analog audio onto the Dante network right at the wall plate – removing the need for analog wiring in the wall. If this is not possible, analog to Dante interfaces like the Stewart Audio NetAV I/O or the Attero Tech unDIO2x2 or unD4I can often be located in a wall box to make the analog to Dante transition and still minimize analog wiring in the walls. Finally, if analog wiring in the walls cannot be avoided, Attero Tech, Stewart Audio, and Symetrix have a number of analog to Dante I/O interfaces in a variety of channel counts for this purpose. You can also use the Audio-Technica Dante-enabled microphones in some applications and eliminate the wall plate altogether.  Audio-Technica  just released the ATND8677 microphone base (not introduced at the time of this example project) which is a great way to get a gooseneck microphone directly on the network.

Calrec is a Dante licensee.

There is always some multicast traffic in a Dante network, for discovery, clock synchronization, and status updates. Whether the audio is transported via multicast is a user setting in Dante Controller.

All the subscriptions that were in place before the power down will be restored with no user intervention required. Dante end-points store all of their settings, including audio routing information locally on the end-point.

We have demonstrated video over Dante at InfoComm 2012.

Savings come from being able to use the best-in-class targeted device for the application, rather than being forced to develop a system solution based on a single manufacturer’s product offering. Savings also come from minimizing analog wiring infrastructure in favor of CAT5/6. We have found considerable cost savings using Dante for audio end points, especially when using logic I/O. The savings start with using CAT5/6, no costly audio snakes and termination costs, extra conductors for logic I/O and connecting all of the audio and logic I/O virtually in the design software. Not to mention the cost of drilling floor for snake wire, or using RF microphones because wiring to the table is impossible.

SymNet Composer can create the subscriptions which is basically what is done in Dante Controller on the routing page. We also add control, setup and monitoring functionality as provided by various manufactures which can’t be done in Dante Controller. An example would be setting the preamp gain and turning on the phantom power for an input on the AtteroTech unDIO2x2 or in the case of the Shure MX Dante Wireless mics we can also monitor things like RF signal strength, battery life, charge state, mic type and whether it is active plus multiple other things.

In most cases, Dante devices place four channels in a single flow. If you are manually patching a device, Dante will add four consecutive patches to a single flow (e.g. 1,2,3,4 then 5,6,7,8 then 9,10,11,12, etc.). Once a flow has been created, Dante will not delete the flow until all channels in the flow have been re-patched. So, if you were to patch as above, you would use three flows for 12 channels. But if you un-patched 2,3,4 and 6,7,8 and 10,11,12, you would still be using three flows, but for only three channels. If you continued to patch channels this way, you could run out of flows quickly By resetting the Dante device, you also allow it to re-organize the channels into fewer flows, and free up more flows for patching.

Dante Virtual Soundcard is a software application that works on Macs or PCs that acts as a soundcard. It allows you to access applications like DAWs, sound effects, iTunes, or Skype and connect to the Dante Network.

In the next week or two we will be releasing SymNet Composer 3.0 and adding full support for the Audio-Technica and Shure Dante mics. Both of them have a push to talk button that is fully assignable within our software and can be used to issue a command, trigger a preset, or pretty much anything else you would want to do with it. You can also program the LEDs on the mic to indicate various different states.

The preset file is an easy to understand, plain XML file format. You can open it in your plain text editor of choice.

I think there are two questions here. The first is whether Dante audio routing can be controlled dynamically from 3rd party controllers like Crestron. While this is not possible directly, Attero Tech has a product called the CommandHub that can act as a “proxy” between a Crestron and a Dante network to allow audio routing changes “on the fly”. The second question is whether other controllable aspects of Dante-enabled products can be controlled by Crestron, and the answer here is yes – either directly or through a CommadHub.

Based on current market feedback, AES support is a higher priority as there are requirements for Layer 3 and the importance if working with standardized network switches. There are no immediate plans in the near future for support of AVB.

Yes. We chose to use one of the Symetrix processors as the master clock. This was easily set within Dante Controller.

SymNet Composer.

This is typically caused by multicast traffic being filtered or blocked between to parts of the network. When this happens, the two parts of the network cannot “see” the clocks from the other part, and two master clocks are elected.