Hi All,
I'm looking to do a sizeable DANTE installation at a client site, and being completely honest - I've never done one before.
The general principal of DANTE is fine, and getting it to work is not a problem. I have got the virtual sound card and got some PoE DANTE speakers on order. My previous trade has been a network engineer - so again, this is not an issue.
However, due to my lack of experience I have the following issue:
I have specified a multi-track DANTE media player server in the form of a Medialon MAS Pro DANTE 32-ch. This will be distributed to around 64 speakers, most of which will actually share the same stereo channels. I have now since had another audio source drop in - an analogue input from a digital AV player. Our Medialon system doesn't support external inputs into its mixer (AFAIK), so I'm now forced to come to a different solution. Ultimately, the problem arises because I need to ensure that an emergency audio track can be played to all speakers, so how do I get this extra input to play most of the time, except when interrupted by said messages?
In this scenario, the AV player, and speakers are actually in the same room but linking via analogue is not a solution for us. So I have the following choice at the moment, unless DANTE can do something clever?
Use DANTE AVIO modules and route independently of other audio channels on the network, and then have a second set of speakers for global output from our media server. Problem with this ultimately is still ducking the volume to allow the announcement to be heard.
Background on our other hardware:
- Managed PoE switches with VLAN, IGMP etc. and exceptional throughput
- Monacor DT05 general speakers
- DANTE AVIO for high power speakers
- Show Control system that can interface to API's in an unlimited fashion
The system is being installed in a different country to my own, hence the want to move everything to IP. I am open to a solution that involves an extra bit of kit maybe, but realistically the cost impact of that has to be minimal.
Thanks for reading, and please let me know if anything needs clarifying to help form a solution.
