Dante Fundamentals

The audio travels in small, regularly timed packets, and each receiver plays them out after a fixed latency set in Dante Controller. The available settings depend on the device, and the default is 1 ms. According to Audinate, 1 ms is sufficient for a very large network with a gigabit core and up to 10 hops between edge switches, and smaller gigabit-only networks can use lower values, down to 150 µs on the fastest devices such as PCIe cards. Because the latency is fixed, the delay through the network is known in advance, and this predictability makes a packet network usable for live audio.

A packet that arrives after the configured latency is discarded and produces an audible click. Congestion, a misconfigured switch, a multicast problem or a clock fault therefore all show up as clicks and dropouts. A Dante system is designed like any other production network, with managed switches and QoS, a single clock leader and a latency setting matched to the size of the network.