Dante Network

With hundreds of professional audio manufacturers now supporting Dante, it is an easy way to route multiple channels of high quality audio at a very low latency between two or more pieces of equipment (including directly out of a PC or Mac using only its Ethernet port.) Dante (Digital Audio Network Through Ethernet) is a standard audio-over-Ethernet protocol developed and supported by Audinate Pty Ltd.

Please note that we did not develop the Dante protocol. We are simply an end-point. In this manual, we just barely scratch the surface of Dante's capabilities. The creators of Dante know their protocol better than anyone!

Please visit www.getdante.com for a vast wealth of training videos, example setups, and documentation.

Our Switch Back PLUS is able to receive up to 64 channels of audio from other Dante devices on the network and also outputs 10 channels of audio that can be routed to other Dante enabled equipment using a standard Ethernet network connection and Cat6 cabling. Dante will work with standard network switches and routers and is safe to combine with your existing computer network, if necessary. 100BaseT network speed is supported.

A Dante network requires at least two devices that support the Dante protocol and a single Cat6 network connection between the two devices. Before you can send audio over the Dante network, you must first connect a Windows PC or Mac running the Dante Controller software (download from www.getdante.com) in order to configure audio channel routing. You must choose what you want to send to the input channels of the PLUS and also if you want to route any of the audio from the PLUS to any other Dante device.

After configuration, the computer can be disconnected. If you want to send and receive audio with a PC or Mac, you can connect the computer's Ethernet cable directly into the PLUS (using an in-line PoE+ power injector to power the PLUS) or into a PoE+ network switch to which the other Dante devices are also connected. And you must purchase a copy of the Dante Virtual Soundcard software (download from www.getdante.com) which makes the Dante audio inputs and outputs show up as standard sound devices on your computer.

note

If using Wi-FI, Dante Controller will allow you to configure the routing of the audio on the Dante network, but you cannot send and receive Dante audio with your computer over Wi-Fi. You must have a hard wired Ethernet connector to send and receive audio.

Multicast Transmit Flows

To send channels to multiple PLUS mixers, we recommend using multicast transmit flows. The transmitting device may otherwise run out of available flows and not be able to send audio to all receiving devices. See Multicast Transmit Flow Configuration (external) for information on how to configure this.

Channels Transmitted to Dante

Transmit Channels
#	Channel Name	Description	Notes
1	Mic	Always on microphone input from the XLR	Impacted by selectable gain and high pass filter
2	Inst	Always on high impedance instrument input from the 1/4" connector
3	Line 1	Always on balanced line level Line 1 input	Even if the line stereo link setting is enabled, these are mono individual left and right outputs
4	Line 2	Always on balanced line level Line 2 input
5	Mix L	The Left stereo channel of the entire PLUS's internal mix	Not impacted by the Master volume or limiter settings
6	Mix R	The Right stereo channel of the entire PLUS's internal mix
7	BC Mic	Normally muted microphone input	These channels are unmuted by pressing the "BROADCAST" button
8	BC Inst	Normally muted instrument input
9	BC Line 1	Normally muted Line 1 input
10	BC Line 2	Normally muted Line 2 input

Channels Received from Dante

Receive Channels
Stereo Channel #	Available at Sample Rates	Channel Name
1-8	44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz	Assigned in Dante Controller
9-16	44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz
17-32	44.1kHz, 48kHz

note

The PLUS can only receive audio from 16 different Dante devices (16 different receive streams) at any one time.