Bench Talk

New Tech Tuesday

Join journalist Tommy Cummings for a weekly look at all things interesting, new, and noteworthy for design engineers.

Your legacy analog audio equipment can still rock on. All it takes is a—pardon the pun—a sound solution. This isn’t to get into the analog-versus-digital debate when it comes to sound quality. People have their preferences and typically stick to them, which is cool.

Plenty of products are available, but let’s look at one sound solution for applications large and small for all types of venues. This week’s New Tech Tuesday focuses on the Neutrik Dante^® Audio Network Solutions and Amphenol Amphe-Dante Dante^® Adapters.

If you’ve been to an entertainment event, you’ve likely heard—or seen—Dante products in action. The Minnesota Twins baseball club uses a Dante system for its Target Field audio system, managing control for the stadium’s speaker system and 18 other locations that receive audio feeds. Shea’s Buffalo Theatre in Buffalo, N.Y., also employs a Dante system as part of its project to restore and upgrade the facility. In the era of COVID-19, a Dante system is also helping the University of Southern California reach students with digital distance learning.

How does Dante make A/V control manageable? Dante audio systems provide connections between microphones, mixers, processors, amplifiers, and speakers. Dante manages specialized analog cables with a computer network, sending video or hundreds of channels over Ethernet cables with digital fidelity. Dante hardware or software in a device takes digital audio and packetizes it, segmenting and wrapping the signal in Internet Protocol (IP) packets suitable for transmission across a standard IP network.

Connections are managed with software or apps, making routes faster, readable, and reliable. All devices share the same network, meaning signals can be sent between any devices no matter where they are with no rewiring needed.

A cool thing about a Dante system: It’s expandable. You can keep adding hardware modules, chips, reference designs, and software to design products ranging from single-channel microphones to 500-plus channel broadcast consoles. All devices are equipped with lockable connections and, together with a removable rubber protection, offers a solution for tough-stage conditions. It’s like building with Legos. The optional mounting brackets or rack panels enable devices to be mounted below tables, in floor boxes, racks or on a truss.

It plays well with peripheral products such as the Amphenol Amphe-Dante Dante^® Adapters. These digital-to-analog, analog-to-digital, and bi-directional active adapters enable simple connection of analog equipment to a Dante network.

Dante systems and their adapters are not just for sound engineers. Dante’s wide choice of products and Amphenol adapters are intuitive to most levels of audio enthusiasts. Air guitar optional.