2000s
Audinate develops Dante
Audio Network / Tech History
The Story of Dante
Dante is not simply audio over a network cable; it combines IP, switching, discovery, QoS and time.
The Problem
Analog multicores and proprietary digital stagebox systems were heavy, expensive and often inflexible. Audio needed to move over standard network infrastructure.
The Story
Audinate developed Dante as a professional Audio-over-IP system. It uses standard Ethernet/IP, automatic device discovery, channel routing and precise synchronization.
The Technical Idea
Dante transports digital audio channels as network streams. Transmitters and receivers subscribe to channels, switches forward packets and a shared clock keeps playback synchronized.
What Survived Until Today?
Clock master, latency, unicast, multicast, QoS and discovery are fixed Dante terms. Many Dante problems are therefore really network problems.
Why Event Technicians Still Care
In productions, consoles, stageboxes, amplifiers and recorders sit on the Dante network. Clean switch configuration and time synchronization are part of audio engineering.
Eventhacker Field Example
A Dante setup sounds unstable although every cable is connected. The cause may be the wrong switch, missing QoS or a clock problem.
Timeline
2010s
Dante becomes widely adopted in professional audio devices