The Dante Digital network has been raising a stir in the pro-audio, broadcast sound, recording, and sound reinforcement industries capturing several major prizes and industry collaborations recently. While Dante is one of several competing standards for communicating multiple audio channels over standard Ethernet and IP networks. Dante seems to be capturing the spotlight and may have a technological edge over the competition. It has garnered numerous prestigious awards and the number of manufacturers lining up to support the technology and collaborate is impressive. Most notable among them are Yamaha Commercial Audio system, Allen&Heath, Peavey Commercial Audio, Bosch, Dobly Labs, and Electro-Voice.

To Help you understand why this technology has the potential to change our industry I present the following information straight from the Audinate web site.

Why Digital Networking?

Challenges of Analog Distribution

Signal distribution in the studio has long involved massive amounts of wiring and large patch panels. Analog signal distribution required separate physical channels for every signal. Switching and routing required expensive crosspoint analog switching devices. There was required a constant effort to maintain signal integrity and three wire balanced signals were often employed. The move to digital has made signal integrity much easier to achieve and has even allowed the multiplexing of multiple channels onto a single physical channel. This is often done using proprietary techniques and different manufacturers use different techniques and technologies. Switching and routing still involve expensive proprietary technologies and equipment.

Many of us have downloaded mp3 or iTune tracks off of the internet. Many of us have streamed audio from the internet. Most of us have experienced the power of Dolby Sound either at home or at the theatre. The common enabling thread of these and numerous other technologies that we unknowingly encounter on a daily basis is digital data reduction or compression. Few of us really understand the underlying principles that enable these technologies that many of us have so fully embraced. At Electronic Musician there is a great article on the subject of Digital Data Compression. The wide variety of compression standards presents a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms and trade names, Dolby AC-3, Sony Atrac, Roland R-DAC, DTS, MP3, MP4, etc. So what are they and why are they used. Fidelity in digital audio is a function of the sampling rate and resolution of the digitization process. However, as sampling rate and resolution increase the data rate and storage space also increase. Transmission of the highest quality audio without compression would require massive amounts of bandwidth.

Digital audio is continuing to remake the whole technology of music making. It has become the dominant force in the creation and processing of sound. On the other hand the distribution and routing of audio signals has largely remained in the analog domain. Digital technology is capable, however, of transforming even this process.

Electronic Musician has an article this month on the emerging technology of digital audio networks. This technology will have an impact on us in the near future. This could address things like how to we wirelessly connect multiple channels of audio to our remote amplifiers and speaker systems when routing via wires is not possible.

Those interested in confronting this brave new world can check it out further in this article.