Successful audio solution, Dante, has seen plenty of success in the commercial space. Matt Murry looks at how the platform can apply to the residential market. 

Dante (Digital Audio Network Through Ethernet) and its suite of hardware and software platforms, developed by Sydney-based Audinate, represents one of several competing Layer 3 professional audio protocols for transporting multi-channel audio over Ethernet (AoE) and IP (AoIP) networks.

Developed in 2006, Dante improved upon then-existing AoE/AoIP protocols that appeared as early as a decade earlier, such as CobraNet in 1996. Another surprising early pioneer in AoE technology was the Gibson Guitar Corporation, with the instrument maker introducing Gibson MaGIC (Media-accelerated Global Information Carrier) in 1999. It was not until 2006 that the Les Paul-based HD.6X-Pro debuted, the first (and only) guitar to digitally output sound from the strings and even more uniquely, each individually.

In 2001, EtherSound arrived on the market. While accepted by the then-dominant manufacturers in the pro audio community, many desirable features were limited for use on a standard Ethernet network. Gibson aside, with its rather particular pinprick of an application, these IP protocols pre-dating Dante have mainly gone by the wayside due to drawbacks such as maximum channel limitations, configuration complexities and intolerable latency.

Dante’s growing success

In the nearly two decades since Dante premiered, it has steadily garnered market share, primarily in professional audio, ranging from studio and content creation environments to stadium-sized playback systems.

Still, its unabated evolution has led Dante to dominate in products manufactured for commercial audio projects. In a 2023 report published by RH Consulting, focusing on networked AV products added per protocol, Dante was revealed as ruling commandingly in distributed audio, with over 6,000 devices shipped by 602 brands.

AES67

Also mentioned in the same breath is Dante’s overlap with AES67, as nearly all the devices referred to above have an AES67 compatibility mode. AES67, developed by the Audio Engineering Society, which cites its release as 11 September 2013, is not necessarily used intrinsically as the independent technical standard that, in reality, it happens to be. Instead, it functions as a referee or, said technically, a bridging compliance mode common to all popular IP networks, ensuring interoperability between standards that, before AES67, competed against one another in the networked audio marketplace.

Dante for residential

Presently, Dante enjoys a smaller footprint with residential integrators than in commercial and professional audio; it is, at best, a pinkie-toe print.

Beginning just a few years ago, manufacturers started to dabble with Dante in residential products, but not on a scale perceived as a pointedly concentrated effort tailored exclusively for home use. A handful of high-end concerns have incorporated Dante capabilities into select models, such as HARMAN International in a JBL Synthesis processor with a provision that transports multi-channel information to Dante-equipped amplifiers over a single category wire instead of through multiple analogue interconnects.

Storm Audio and Trinnov Audio, admittedly at or near the top of the home cinema audio processing category, also market models equipped with Dante/AES67 compatible outputs for this purpose. Trinnov may often be found positioned in these systems, interfacing with DCI-compliant content servers via projector-installed Dolby Integrated Media Server IMS3000 cards.

Such systems tickle the upper echelon for what is possible not just residentially but…somewhat emphatically, period. While applications like these demonstrate Dante at its uncompressed, lossless peak of 24 to 32 bits and up to 192kHz sampling rate, it is an ostensible representation of the technology’s advantages when connected in a mere, point-to-point fashion.

Dante in more widespread applications

Dante was designed for transport well beyond the equipment rack and the opportunities residential installations offer are as vast as integrators’ imaginations. Commercial-oriented products are now beginning to be marketed at residential integrators, while some have been utilised in residential designs for some time now.

Distributed audio has dramatically benefitted from Dante-enabled amplifiers and speakers. Multi-channel, DSP-capable audio matrix amplifiers provide efficient, onboard digital high-power modules for power-demanding passive speakers and subwoofers while also including Dante connectivity. The newly introduced AudioControl Director Model M6800D reflects a universal, crossover approach by outfitting Dante connectivity into an already popular network amplifier appealing to commercial and residential integrators alike.

Dante eliminates the maze of countless analogue cables required to patch input signals to as many as 16 output channels per amplifier. Though shielded, analogue cables are susceptible to induced spurious noise from airborne frequencies based on their respective lengths and those proximity-radiated by digital and AC devices in a hectic rack environment, requiring elevated performance parameters and high-quality build metrics for trouble-free installations. As a direct result, this equates to higher project costs passed on to the end user. In expansive layouts where banks of amplifiers are the norm, the elegant implementation of Dante enables the reduction of rack clutter, simplifies troubleshooting and, as a high bitrate interface, bolsters system performance.

Estate class residential projects benefit from Dante by placing amplification closer to speaker groupings, with content signalling transported up to 100m using category cabling (CAT 6A recommended) and far greater distances using fibre options.

Does everybody know what time it is?

When a common audio source is heard throughout an expansive layout, the multiple benefits of using Dante for distribution become readily tangible.

In the heart of every Dante device is a voltage-controlled crystal oscillator clock.

Multiple Dante devices across a network automatically select a device as Leader Clock, which all other device clocks automatically follow using IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol. Synchronisation enables precise latency management, an impossibility with signals in the analogue domain, limiting time delay to an inaudible 1ms or less (depending on the Dante platform).

Also, a plus on the residential side, Dante is compatible with a standard 1Gbps home network. Beneficial in retro and takeover projects or those simply new, matrixing multiple source signals from afar can be accomplished with category or fibre optic cabling, error and noise-free. New design opportunities arise in advanced systems using Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) network switches.

Speaking of using PoE…

While the trade-off in economy should be carefully evaluated, PoE, PoE+, PoE++ and UPoE switches enable an exciting departure from traditional distributed audio. PoE speakers incorporate amplification into the speaker assembly, receiving Dante signals directly from a powered switch.

Typically, low-power consumption Class D digital amplifiers are matched to efficient speaker designs and this combination can produce adequate sound pressure levels for a residential acoustic space. The expectation should not be playback volume at sound reinforcement decibels. Still, many are designed to deliver audio output levels equal to traditional analogue systems specified for applications requiring clean, articulate sound and a satisfactory musical presence. Just don’t expect the experience to be the hillside at Yasgur’s farm.

Elaborate execution with designs in this area offers electronic acoustic-shaping and time alignment capabilities, with some manufacturers using dual amplifiers for high and low frequencies. Locating amplification onboard, synchronisation is further reduced to sub-microsecond levels, eliminating the traditional copper speaker wire amplifier-to-speaker interface.

Re-thinking network and cabling infrastructure

A quarter century ago, legendary cable innovator Noel Lee and Monster Cable offered an SKU in which RGBHV, dual CAT 5e and dual fibre cables were inside a single jacket. Positioned as the panacea for a single-drop solution, the wire could be used for component video and audio distribution, a still fledgling Ethernet and, in the future, fibre. It was challenging to manage and was as large as a residential water hose, yet it leveraged against obsolescence in many ways until HDMI appeared.

Residential integrators today have home network pre-wiring down to a science. Or do they? Until AV-over-IP (AV-o-IP) crossed the street and secured residential integrators’ interest, a conventional, upscale home pre-wire package was essentially RG-6 and CAT-something to every (practical) residential wall, with a bit extra tossed in for the home office. Today, via category wire and/or fibre, AV-o-IP, lighting and, as we have seen above, distributed audio may all be installed in a home primarily by using category cabling.

This is why residential integrators should pay heed to include numerous additional fibre and category pre-wire cable destination points moving forward.

Getting plenty of fibre

Those paying attention to advances in Cinema cameras will note that 8K is now standard and companies such as Blackmagic Design have 12K products with interoperability across all Blackmagic platforms, including DaVinci Resolve, the most popular post-production software in Hollywood. While 8K seems to have stalled in the consumer hardware marketplace, professionally in content acquisition and creation, 8K and higher resolutions are moving forward at a feverish pace.

This should set the stage for residential integrators to pre-wire accordingly and as it pertains to distribution, this means fibre. Copper, now widely known, is extremely limited as video resolutions rapidly escalate. The limelight for copper is quickly fading. But hang on… maybe not quite so soon.

Fibre is low in cost, making it inexcusable not to distribute it generously throughout new and retro installations for locations that may host a planned video display or one potentially in the future.

Partners against signal crime

Where copper remains viable is its partnership with fibre. Huh? Think Miami Vice… fibre is “Sonny” Crockett. Brash, on the edge, two steps ahead. Copper is “Rico” Tubbs. Effortlessly cool, dependable and by-the-book.

Commercial and residential integrators should consider running each in parallel. Fibre to carry advancing video bandwidth bandits in impervious-to-noise fashion and copper to provide the PoE, PoE+, PoE++ and UPoE voltage required by more and more devices, including those other than audio and video. Provide termination points for planned or unexpected expansion and even for that “hey, you know what? We could use these to…” moment.

A crafty cable manufacturer may wish to investigate creating such a SKU (you’re welcome). A brief internet search did not pull up a fibre/copper single-wire design.

Summary

Dante did not create A-o-IP but spurred its popularity to become the top A-o-IP format in use today. Audinate recently announced Dante AV and though the video technologies employed are conventional, the pairing can simplify interoperability in many ways with products supporting the same technologies.

Residential integrators owe themselves an opportunity to investigate Dante-enabled products that offer system design flexibility, more streamlined installation and lag-free, site-wide, uncompressed, lossless audio performance. Dante for residential use is simple to learn, merge into designs and deploy. Without Dante, a home is not yet smart.