Dante certification level 1 second edition Network solution versus digital snake now just as some people confuse Dante with a network protocol other people confuse it with a digital snake after all they both use category cable or fiber optic cable so so what's the difference in short a Dante network is far more powerful a digital snake is typically a point-to-point connection the signal goes in a straight line from devices that are Daisy chained together and you may need to jump between several screens or even multiple devices to be able to get a patch from point A
to point B by contrast if you use a network solution you can go anywhere on the network you want with the click of a mouse and as a matter of fact that Network can be shared among multiple systems so think of it this way you're probably watching this video either on a mobile device or on a computer and while you're doing that that device is checking your email or you might be opening a web browser to research a topic that we bring up as you create these additional connections you didn't have to run additional cables
all of this is available on the same network you were using to watch this video likewise when you made these separate connections you didn't have to go to each individual switch and tell it which port to go out the network naturally knows how to route from point to point and that's the advantage of the network so let's see how this benefits Us in an AV system here's a stage and back in the day we would have run a thick analog snake from the stage to the mixer when this went to a digital snake what was
the big change well the multi-core Cable became a thinner category or fiber optic cable but that's about it typically a digital snake does not significantly increase the capabilities of the analog system they were looking to replace even worse because digital snakes are usually proprietary to a particular brand either by definition or in practice when expansion is possible there will only be one product to do it take it or leave it at some point if you outgrow this system there may not be another solution to upgrade to using this digital snake at which point you'll have
to rip the whole system out and start all over again so let's see what happens if we were to tackle this with the Dante system we might put a few switches around our facility and plug our mixers and Stage boxes into that now we can add other things at will if we have some backing tracks we can play that right off the laptop using Dante virtual sound card your computer can speak Dante right to the network we can even set up another computer to do a multi-track recording of the show and of course the network
could integrate directly with other areas we can feed intercom and show feeds to the lobby backstage areas and the green rooms we can integrate video right on the same network the low latency performance of Dante AV is a great choice for live performance and conferencing taking images from cameras and vision mixers right to the screen and we can even put other traffic on the network as well at a Wi-Fi point and you can easily Monitor and control your system right on the same network infrastructure this kind of expandability is really simple with Dante so again
this is what the digital snake offers you just a digital version of an analog snake and here's what a Dante audio video Network offers you and that's what makes Dante systems such a great investment Dante makes products more versatile allowing you to get more functionality from them and they're interchangeable let's suppose you outgrew this mixer okay no problem you can replace just the mixer and it will integrate with the rest of the infrastructure you already have and when it comes to that mixer that you've replaced you have a decision to make do you want to
sell it at which point you might find it held its value pretty well or do you want to just give it a new life somewhere else in your system the choice is yours now let's look at a few examples of how a network system will really benefit you here we start with a wireless mic system of course on the network we can split the signal for the monitor desk which is mixing for the performers and for front of house where they're mixing for the audience each position would have a laptop for a virtual sound check
virtual soundcheck just means that you could record the sound check for about 10 minutes and then send the band back to the Green Room so they can get ready for the event in the meantime you can work off the recording to fine-tune your settings now again we also had another system recording this event and maybe we have a backstage monitor to check the wireless functionality before somebody goes on stage well that's a six-way signal split and Dante can do this with ease this sort of thing also happens on the output side for Signal distribution the
signal could go to several amplifiers on stage or around a facility for a distributed audio system no problem so here's another example of a difference let's suppose we're going to pull in some backing tracks on a digital snake well let's suppose we take our computer and get a USB interface and then connect that with analog cables to the stage box you might not think about this but we now have three unrelated signal types for one signal chain USB analog and the digital snake and we're having to use up some stage box channels effectively you bought
two interfaces to get that signal up to the mixer and there's no control capabilities across any of this you're still going to have to set up a separate Network to achieve that so now let's look at how Dante manages this all devices are cleanly connected to a network switch the network can be used for more than just audio transport it can also control the subscriptions on any device control the mixer or monitor the amplifier performance notice too that backing tracks do not use up inputs on the stage box they follow a direct link from the
laptop to the mixer remaining digital the whole way and we could provide far more than eight channels if desired users of Dante probably take this for granted but when we make our tools we make them available on Mac OS and windows our programs will work identically on both platforms so in a quick review Dante is not just an audio video transport or an audio video protocol it is a complete solution the protocol is certainly part of it but we extend that with standardized chipsets software libraries and network management tools and our r d staff is
constantly working to keep everything up to date and to add new features the result is a Dante solution that is intuitive powerful and cost effective you can start out with Dante using simple Plug and Play methods then release the more advanced features later when you need them Dante certainly benefits from the network effect having lots of devices to interact with in 2019 we surpassed a million devices in the field and we're continuing to grow strong with the widest selection of products and price points in the field you're sure to find a Dante product that will
fit your need
