There’s nothing quite like seeing your favourite band or musician live on stage surrounded by tens of thousands of other fans. But did you ever wonder how even when you’re at the back of the stadium there is no sound delay, and you feel you are right there with the likes of Bruce Springsteen?
Without the audio and visual elements at a concert, the magic would be lost
There’s nothing like standing among tens of thousands of fans watching your favourite band or musician live on stage: the lights, the sounds, your idols in the flesh. It’s magical.
But did you ever wonder how — even when you’re at the back of the stadium, in the nose-bleed seats — there is no sound delay, making you feel as though you’re right there, with the likes of Bruce Springsteen?
This is because of Dante. Dante is an uncompressed, multi-channel digital media networking technology with near-zero sound delay and world-leading synchronisation, the next generation of the original technology called Audinate.
Normally an audio system is a network of cables plugged from point to point, telling different devices what to do and when. It’s just a mess of wires. And we all know how frustrating it is when you’re belting out ABBA’s greatest hits at karaoke and you trip over Björn’s microphone lead. Well instead of this mess of wires, Dante’s technology transmits audio over a single Ethernet cable, and more recently over digital wireless microphone systems, connecting a whole stadium or concert venue.
Setting up networks of audio and visual equipment for something as big as a Springsteen concert is normally pretty time consuming and complicated. But with the Dante system you can integrate the entire thing over a single IP network.
Reasons to be in awe of Audinate
Audinate’s Dante tech means you can go from this mess of cables to just one or two
Audinate began developing this breakthrough technology in 2003 and, after just a few short years, with a love of music and some support from NICTA (now our Data61), Dante was created.
The Sydney-born company challenged how audio networking was achieved. At that time, if you wanted an effective audio network, you had to use the complex fixed point-to-point wiring between devices. The industry was asking ‘why does it have to be so complicated, why could there not be a single network?’
It was these questions that lead Audinate to realise the primary problem was the hardware. So, they created a digital audio distribution approach using computer networks.
Challenging the norm, and winning
Now just 14 years later, Audinate’s technology has been used in venues worldwide including Nashville’s LP Field and the London Olympic Aquatics Centre, and by the likes of Pope Francis and music royalty Paul McCartney, Prince, Jamiroquai and Elton John.
To top it off, the technology company that started with a handful of engineers has this week been successfully listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.
This is just one example of how our Data61 is seeding new industries in Australia and collaborating with existing industry to transform and scale them up. Supporting Australian companies, imagining new solutions while we move through the next wave of digitisation — it’s what we do best. Find out how you can collaborate with us.
