Dante Domain Manager Runs the Show at the Future Art Lab in Vienna   

AV in all the concert halls, sound design studios, foley rooms and theaters is securely managed by Dante Domain Manager

PORTLAND, Oregon — Wednesday, October 19, 2023 — The University of Music and Performing Arts of Vienna is one of the largest and most respected schools of its kind in the world. Originally founded in 1817, it has a wide array of programs dedicated to advanced studies in musical composition, performance and recording. The Future Art Lab (FAL) is the school’s latest commitment to these subjects, an ambitious and complex undertaking that was made possible by Audinate’s industry-standard Dante audio protocol and Dante Domain Manager.

A multi-story high-tech complex, FAL was designed to meet the rapidly expanding scope of the school’s audio engineering, film production and music composition programs as well as anticipate the needs of its students within emerging multimedia formats. When designing the building, school staff contracted with system designer WSDG (Walters Storyk Design Group) and integrator TSAMM to implement the bold acoustic vision for FAL. The WSDG design team was tasked with creating a full interior acoustics and system design package for the entire complex that could accommodate both analog and digital workflows, high-quality network integration, and Dolby ATMOS in some areas, as well as be configurable for a broad variety of multimedia production applications and educational needs. The range of room profiles included multiple recording studios, live rooms, sound design labs, and a theater for screening film and video projects.

“FAL was a momentous undertaking for the university,” said Dirk Noy, Director , WSDG. “Each room had a challenging list of audio requirements, and the overarching need for each room to be interconnected to other spaces made the design very challenging indeed. Luckily, we could turn to Dante to help manage all the audio.”

FAL has one of the largest audio networks ever installed in a recording studio complex. All twelve control rooms, seven recording studios, the Arthouse Cinema, and virtually every other room on the university campus are interlinked via countless audio channels. Several separate Dante Networks are managed by Dante Domain Manager according to the students’ schedules and lectures, allowing live performances to take place simultaneously with student activities without concern for compromising the audio network.

Dante Domain Manager is Audinate’s management solution for Dante networks. It provides AV and IT professionals with the ability to define specific AV device groupings by room, building and site, through the creation of independent Dante Domains. Each domain has multiple access levels to improve network security, and enables scalability by allowing audio routing across multiple IP subnets.

“Dante and Dante Domain Manager were crucial to the success of FAL,” said Mario Reithofer, Director at TSAMM. “We integrated a multitude of devices in the building from many leading audio manufacturers to create a reliable and functioning system, and the only reasonable way we could accomplish the integration was with Dante. And Dante Domain Manager made managing the various Dante networks easy.”