User Manual
Table Of Contents
- Copyright
- About Audinate
- Introduction
- Installing Dante Controller
- Dante Basics
- Discovery and auto-configuration
- Device Channels
- Differentiating between input and output channels
- Device Names and Channel Labels
- Routing Audio
- Clock Synchronization
- Latency
- Device Lock
- Dante Control and Monitoring
- Starting Dante Controller
- Using Dante Controller
- Network View
- Status Bar
- Network View Tabs
- Channel Groups
- Clock Status Monitoring
- Clock Status Monitor
- Automatic Notification of Device Errors
- Device View
- Device View Tabs
- Multicast Transmit Flow Configuration
- Using Dante Controller with Dante Domain Manager
- Presets
- Troubleshooting
- Fanout
- Messages on Startup
- Computer Configuration Checklist
- Troubleshooting Dante IP Address Configuration
- Troubleshooting Switch Configuration and Cabling
- Index
Dante Controller User Guide
Copyright © 2018 Audinate Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Note: Dante devices that do not support redundancy must be connected to the primary network only.
Audio Formats
Most Dante devices support a range of audio formats (sample rates). Devices can usually be switched
between audio formats, but will not support more than one at a time.
It is only possible to set up a subscription between channels which have a common audio format.
Channels on devices with incompatible formats will be shown in grey, and will not be routable.
Flows
Dante audio routing creates 'flows'. Each flow carries one or more channels of audio from a transmitting
device to one or more receiving devices. There are two types of flow, unicast and multicast.
Unicast routing creates flows to a single receiving device; a unicast flow typically assigns space for 4
channels of audio. Unicast flows are set up when a receiver subscribes to an available audio channel, and
are automatically removed when the receiver unsubscribes from all channels in that flow.
Multicast routing creates flows that can be received by multiple receivers. Multicast flows are assigned
IDs, enabling them to be identified in Dante Controller, and to facilitate their removal. In contrast to unicast
flows, multicast flows must be set up on the
transmitting
Dante device before receivers can subscribe to
these flows.
Advanced Routing: Using Multicast
Dante routing is unicast by default. This means that a separate flow is set up between each transmitter and
receiver. If several receivers are all subscribed to the same channels of a transmitter, it may sometimes be
more efficient to use
multicast
.
Multicast sends the same set of channels to multiple receivers. In practice, this usually means that the
audio flow is flooded throughout the network. If many receivers want the same channels, using multicast
can reduce overall network use, especially on the transmitter, because only one copy of each audio
channel needs to be sent, rather than many.
Dante receivers will automatically prefer multicast to unicast if it is available. This means that if a new
multicast flow is created containing the channels that a receiver is currently receiving as unicast, the
receiver will switch over to receiving audio from the multicast flow and the unicast flow will be removed.
Clock Synchronization
In Standard Dante Networks
All Dante-enabled devices use the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) across the network to
synchronize their local clocks to a master clock, providing sample-accurate time alignment throughout the
network.
One Dante device will be elected as the PTP Master Clock for the network; all other Dante devices act as
a PTP Slave Clocks to the elected master clock. Although many Dante devices may be capable of
becoming PTP Master Clock, only one device will win the election. Devices with clock inputs (e.g. Word
Clock or AES3) will be preferred in the election process. A gigabit connected device is preferred over a
device connected via 100Mbps. A tie-breaker rule of the lowest MAC address is used if several equivalent