What began in 2011 as an Audinate seminar attended by 25 participants has grown into an audio networking event, with nearly ten times this figure attending 2016’s Dante AV Networking World.
Keynote speaker Roland Hemming, principal at RH Consulting, opened the event on the eve of ISE by predicting a positive future for Dante. Recent market research was presented, indicating that professionals were increasingly making Dante their networking technology of choice with Hemming saying that he expects the overall use of audio networking to grow by 50% in the next year.
This growth is fuelled by the increased availability of Dante enabled products, which has grown significantly in the last 12 months. At ISE, Audinate announced that more than 275 manufactures have adopted Dante technology.
During a roundtable discussion amongst manufacturers, Terry Holton, general manager for Yamaha R&D spoke about fulfilling customer expectations of audio networking. He stated: “Customers want to know that products will all work together based on common technology. Dante incorporates additional elements like control and routing to provide a networked solution. From the customer’s perspective, they see Dante gives them freedom to choose the products they want.”
Speaking on how Dante had benefitted his work at Bose Professional, the company’s manager of global events and applications Rob Kosman, added: “Dante enables individual manufacturers to focus on their respective product strengths, bringing together a complete network ecosystem which allows OEMs to reduce product development time to market.” Reflecting on its applications, he said: “While people often think networking benefits large scale installations, we are now at the point where we are seeing Dante commonly installed in retail and restaurants.”
“While people often think networking benefits large scale installations, we are now at the point where we are seeing Dante commonly installed in retail and restaurants.”
Shure senior director of engineering Rob Fuhlbrugge expanded on its advantages to the end user, noting: “The higher application layers developed by Audinate enable us to create custom interfaces without impacting the interoperability and ecosystem, which allows for a better product interaction for the end user.”
Following the discussion, Steven Kemland, project division manager at Face Belgium, presented two recent projects where Dante was used in conjunction with Powersoft. He highlighted how outdoor theme park, Plopsaland, is benefi tting from Dante’s ability to run over a converged IT network with a distributed audio system for background music and announcements. A recent installation at Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp was further recognised for how it had used Dante to distribute audio throughout the classic concert hall and ten congress spaces.
Audinate also showcased how its Dante Via software allows users to merge and route all computer-based audio at the event. David Akroyd spoke about his experience deploying the largest installation to date of Dante Via at London’s Imperial College. The 3D visual visualisation project at KPMG Data Observatory incorporates a 313-degree circular video wall of 64 videowall class monitors with the audio distributed using Dante Via in over 40 computers.