Dante Routing and Clocking

One device is elected leader clock, and every other device becomes a follower that adjusts its own clock to the leader. The election is automatic, and an operator can mark a device as Preferred Leader in Dante Controller; if several devices carry that setting, the one with the lowest MAC address is chosen. Audinate now uses the terms leader and follower where older documents said master and slave. An unstable leader, or parts of a system that follow different leaders, produce clicks, ticks and dropouts that sound like an audio fault although the cause is timing.

Routing is set up as subscriptions: a receiver channel is subscribed to a transmitter channel, usually in Dante Controller or through a console's own interface. A missing subscription produces silence, and a wrong one delivers the right audio to the wrong input.

When Dante audio glitches, the usual order of diagnosis is to check the clock status in Dante Controller and the switches on the PTP path before the analogue equipment, because a timing fault is heard as an audio fault.