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Audinate Dante Via Network Routing Software
By Gregory Rushton
Dante Via is the newest software development from Audinate that harnesses computer processing power to provide an on-ramp / off-ramp of audio to a Dante network in a user-friendly manner . Once you wrap your head around what this truly means , it becomes rather impressive .
Most of us have invested money at some point or another into hardwarebased audio interfaces . As technology develops , we must upgrade to the newest host hardware and / or software to take advantage of new features and / or new equipment , or in the professional integration world , additional feature requests to an already implemented digital signal processor . This can be a painful and expensive cycle .
Enter Dante Via .
Utilizing Via , any existing audio interface using WDM and CoreAudio drivers becomes a source and / or destination available to other Dante-enabled devices . Via supports 2 x 2 software channels and 32 x 32 hardware channels for a total of 48 x 48 channels of I / O . It should be noted that there is a limit of Dante interfaces to software applications of eight ; similarly , audio mixes including the “ default mix ” are also limited to eight . One great feature of Via is the ability to route application audio to multiple destinations simultaneously , for instance , from iTunes to local speakers and remote speakers over the network .
Being typical audio gear heads , the first thing we did was to load the software and try it out without reading any application guides or manuals . To our surprise and extreme satisfaction , it worked flawlessly on our corporate network with no special tweaking of network or software settings . Success !
Next , we played around with various routing and security of streams which we deemed to be adequate for the majority of foreseeable applications . The default security required all subscribers to audio streams to request permission from the source via a pop-up window on the source computer . Alternately , this feature can be disabled and ad-hoc monitoring is allowed with no notification to the source computer . A few applications for this are noted below .
The userfriendly interface and plug-andplay discovery is ideal for end users . Churches , community theatres , and schools are some examples of end users that are sure to benefit from the flexibility , ease of use , and price point . Although somewhat limited in comparison to DanteController , the intuitiveness is far superior – especially for end user applications .
Reflecting upon my initial Dante Via experience , although the technology is impressive , I began to relate it to my day job as an independent audiovisual consultant . How could I take advantage of such a rich feature set at this reasonable cost ?
Much to my chagrin , I was struggling to find a place for this in my day-to-day projects . Surely something this universal can ’ t be that difficult to take advantage of . It wasn ’ t until I stepped back and started looking at problems we regularly encounter rather than trying to design a system around Via that I found my answer – problems such as :
• Overflow Audio – Easily add overflow locations anywhere there is a network port .
• Recording – One of the more obvious functions , however easily added if requested to do so .
• Software-Based Codec Integration – Perfect for getting town hall or meeting program audio into a soft codec ( Skype , Jabber , GoToMeeting , WebEx , etc .) streaming or mass deployment to far end destinations .
• Monitoring – Perfect way for administrators to monitor rooms in community centres , libraries etc ., in addition to observation rooms in medical and law enforcement applications .
• Professional Presentations – We are all familiar with professional-style town hall presentations ; however , Dante Via affords us the ability to route specific applications to the Dante networks , eliminating the possibility of hearing unwanted OS sounds or those associated with technicians who get side tracked with games or the internet .
• Community Theatre – A great way for community level or high school theatres to add program monitors to green rooms , etc . Also , there is the added benefit as noted above for application-specific audio routing that allows the cue system to be the only source for audio to be routed .
Although the majority of our projects would not be best served being designed entirely around the Via platform exclusively , it certainly is another win for Dante over other network audio solutions as Via offers many cost effective and reliable solutions for common feature requests in addition to relatively easy and convenient post-installation accommodations of said features .
Gregory Rushton is an Associate in Charge of AV Design at Mulvey & Banani International Inc ., a Toronto-based consultancy . He also freelances as a technical director , production manager , and audio engineer .
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