In live sound touring applications one of most important capabilities needed in any audio networking solution is the support for redundancy.

Support for redundancy can be built into the design by deploying topologies popular in the IT industry, such as trunking, ring and spanning tree design topologies. These design methodologies can be very effective in safely switching from the primary audio network to the secondary network.

With any of these topologies, the typical switching solution offered by traditional digital audio networking protocols is fail over redundancy. In this form of redundancy, when the primary network fails, i.e. loses audio packets on a channel, the network protocol detects the failure and then switches over to the secondary network. However, fail over redundancy invariably introduces a glitch into the network. For most applications a short glitch in the audio is tolerable but with live sound applications this is unacceptable.

Dante™ is designed from the ground up to offer true glitch free redundancy. This is a far superior solution than that offered by other digital audio networking protocols. With Dante, the network can switch from the primary to the secondary and back to the primary, if needed, without introducing a single glitch on the network. Dante is designed and can be setup to actively look for audio packets on both the primary and secondary networks. If a packet is not available on the primary, Dante automatically picks the packet from the secondary without introducing any glitches.

OEMs will want to consider the following Audinate products:

• Brooklyn Module
• Dante Virtual Soundcard
• Dante Core Module
• Dante-MY16-AUD Card

Some of the live events that have benefited from using Dante and glitch free redundancy are:

• The Pope at World Youth Day in Australia, a  400,000+ people event
• Bruce Springsteen
• Barbara Streisand tour
• Oasis tour
• Lynard Skynard tour
• Nickelback tour
• Pussycat Dolls tour
• George Strait tour
• Foo Fighters tour
• Royal Family’s City Salute in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London
• MTV European Music Awards
• Olympic handover event in London
• Wireless and Hard Rock Calling music festivals at Hyde Park in London

Click on the links to learn about Dante Benefits, or to check out the growing list of Dante-enabled products.