In this video, we’ll spend some time focusing upon the primary software application you
use to setup your Dante system - Dante Controller. Dante Controller is free and available for
Macs or Windows PCs. It allows you to discover all devices on the network, configure
clocks, route signals, and much more. Dante Controller works with all Dante-enabled
devices, no matter what the manufacturer. Let’s take a look.
This computer is connected to a Dante network via it’s wired Ethernet port. Note that
Dante does not work on WiFi networks, as those systems cannot yet support the low latency
and channel count that Dante is designed to deliver.
Upon launching Dante Controller, we can see that the Dante devices on our network are
instantly discovered, along with any subscriptions and settings in use.
The Dante Controller interface has five tabs for viewing and controlling different aspects
of your Dante network Routing is the most commonly used tab. This
is where we make and change connections on a channel-by-channel basis between our devices.
Device Info doesn’t allow actions, but tells you about the Dante devices on your network.
This is especially useful when troubleshooting Clock status tells you which device is currently
the Master clock, and allows you to set Master clock and external sync preferences.
Network status doesn’t allow actions, but reports upon network speed, Dante redundancy,
latency, and packet errors. This is also useful when troubleshooting network problems.
Events is a log of system activity. You are automatically notified of anything appearing here,
as it may indicate a system problem that requires attention.
The buttons at the top include more advanced functions we will cover later.
In this video, we’ll focus mainly upon the Routing and Clock settings tabs in Dante Controller,
as they are the most heavily used.
The Routing View in Dante Controller displays receivers along the left vertical axis,
and transmitters along the top horizontal axis. The same devices often appear on both axes,
as they contain both transmitting and receiving channels.
To see the channels that a device has, click the plus sign for that device, and they appear as shown.
Making connections - or subscriptions as we call them, is incredibly easy.
Simply open the channels for the transmitting and receiving
devices you wish to connect… And then click at the intersection of the
channels you wish to connect. When the green checkmark appears, the subscription is active.
If you need to create “splits” - that is, sending the same audio to multiple destinations
- it’s easy to do in Dante Controller. Simply make multiple subscriptions from the transmit
channels to all the receiver channels you wish to use.
You can quickly connect all channels of a transmitter to corresponding channels of a
receiver by control-clicking at the cross-point between devices, right here.
Unsubscribing channels is done the same way. Simply click the green checkmark on an active
subscription, and it goes away.
In Dante, all connections are made using the names of devices and channels. This means
that you don’t have to worry about things such as IP addresses, bundle IDs or magic numbers.
When you reconnect your devices, the names are used to re-establish the subscriptions.
By default, Dante devices come with names preset by the manufacturer. You can give devices
and channels meaningful names in plain language, making it easy to see and understand all your connections.
To change the name of a device, double click
its name in any view to reveal the Device View pane.
Now, navigate to the Device Config tab. Here you can select the name of the device and
change it. Remember that Dante device subscriptions are
all made by name? Since we just changed the name of this device, our subscriptions will
stop, just as this dialog from Dante Controller warns. We’ll do it anyway.
Changing the labels of channels is just as easy. We can give channels meaningful labels,
such as instrument type, vocalist name, and so forth.
To change channel labels, we stay in the Device View. Choose the Receive tab to change the
labels of input channels, or the Transmit tab to change the labels of output channels.
With good labels in place, it is much easier to understand what is happening in the Routing View.
Many people consider the clocking of digital systems to be mysterious,
but with Dante, it is largely automatic.
All Dante hardware devices contain their own
built-in clock. Alternatively, you may choose to sync Dante to the clock of a device such
as a mixing console. Let’s look at the Clock Status tab of Dante
Controller to understand this better.
In Dante, there is always one clock that acts as the reference for all others on the network,
called the Master clock. By default, a Dante system automatically elects
one device to be the Master clock for the network. If this devices fails,
another Master clock is automatically chosen and the system continues to work without pause.
If we wish to ensure that a particular device is our Master clock, we can select the
“Preferred Master” checkbox for that device. That essentially “rigs” the election of the Master.
Note that very often, this is unnecessary. For more detailed information on configuring
clocks in Dante, see our separate video on that subject at our website, audinate.com.
The other videos in this series cover important areas of network setup,
so be sure to watch.