Dante Audio: How does it work and could it be used with my future ATEM Mini Pro Setup
Blog, Ideas, Video ProductionAudio, Blackmagic Design, Dante, Live, Live Events, Video
@Blackmagic_News I have a New request
If you didn’t read my blog post yesterday, I wrote about a shower thought I had, an SDI Multicore. Today though I’m going to have a look at one of the other technologies that I mentioned. Dante Audio.
What is Dante Audio?
Dante is a Hardware & Software technology that enables you to convert audio into bits & bytes and send them over standard network gear and converting the bits & bytes back to audio at the other end. This has a number of advantages:
- There’s no need to run long heavy analogue multicores
- You can easily transmit audio from one space in a venue to another
- It’s scaleable
- You can send one audio source to multiple places
- You can send out from a computer without extra devices.
Having Dante a few years ago when I was working at The Spa in Bridlington would have been amazing for events that took up the whole building. At least twice a year we had events that would take up both the Royal Hall and the Theatre along with all of the conference rooms.
It would have been great to be able to send audio from one of the main venues to the breakout rooms, whilst also having a display with the showing the venue’s front of house camera. Dante makes this stupidly easy with the use of their Dante Controller software. We could have also had the same front of house music flaying in both of the venues and the foyer and other things like that.
The other great thing about Dante is that you could theoretically pair it with NDI to send video across the network too.
What Setups Can I Use Dante With?
Dante can be used setups large and small. That’s right even if you just want to move audio from one side of your office to the other it can do that, you don’t even need to have a dedicated switch if you’re doing a really simple run using one ethernet cable.
This got me thinking though. Could I use Dante instead of the SDI Multi-Core solution that I came up with yesterday and would it be cheaper to implement (well until someone convinces Blackmagic to create the SDI Stage Boxes)? Here is the Plan I came up with:
It’s kind of a similar layout to the second diagram I created yesterday. A stage box at the mixer (also not needed if the mixer has a Dante Card installed), A Switch to replace the SDI distribution and various input and output devices at each camera and the switcher.
The main difference though is the price between the two systems. Here’s the cost for my SDI Multicore setup:
| Product | Qty | Price | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lindy HDMI Audio Splitter | 1 | £53.00 | £53.00 |
| BMD Audio – SDI | 4 | £198.00 | £792.00 |
| BMD SDI – Audio | 6 | £198.00 | £1188.00 |
| Switcher | 0 | £6921.44 | £0.00 |
| Camera | 0 | £16635.36 | £0.00 |
| HDMI Cable 50M | 5 | £345.00 | £1725.00 |
| HDMI Cable 1M | 1 | £13.99 | £13.99 |
| SDI Cable 50M | 5 | £329.99 | £1649.95 |
| SDI Cable 5M | 4 | £15.60 | £62.40 |
| 3.5mm Stero Jack – Pair 1/4” Jack | 8 | £3.35 | £26.80 |
| 1/4” Jack – XLR (Female) | 12 | £10.30 | £123.60 |
| 1/4″ Jack – XLR (Male) | 4 | £10.30 | £41.20 |
| Total | £5,675.94 |
And here’s the cost of the Dante Audio Setup:
| Product | Qty | Price | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yamaha Tio 1608-D (Dante Stage Box) | 1 | £1039.00 | £1039.00 |
| Dante AVIO analog Output Adaptor | 6 | £145.00 | £870.00 |
| Dante AVIO analog Input Adaptor | 1 | £145.00 | £145.00 |
| UBNT USW-16-POE Gen 2 | 1 | £295.18 | £295.18 |
| Total | £2,349.18 |
That’s a massive difference of £3,327.76. Now if Blackmagic did come out with a 16 channel SDI Audio stage box and updated the ATEM firmware to allow 16 channels of audio for SDI feed in the Fairlight mixer (and possibly a small audio embedder device that could merge the audio from your 16 chan stage box into one of SDI video feeds) the price may come down as you’d be able to buy one stage box rather than a bunch of Terranex devices put together in a rack.
For now, I think I’ll be adding the Dante System to my ATEM Mini Setup, which will also pair nicely with my Ubiquiti network stuff too, as not only is it cheaper but it seems more versatile (you can send two way audio on a single cable whereas you’d need two SDI cables with the SDI Multicore.) It would be interesting if Blackmagic use fibre for their audio multicore (if they ever release one) as I would imagine you wouldn’t be limited to just 16 channels) or they could just at Dante to their ATEM Switchers and cameras. If you’re already running a network between you control services in your venue wouldn’t it be great if they could work together too?
What do you think? Would you choose Dante or SDI? Would you be interested in a Fibre solution? Let me know in the comments below.
