Dante Certification Level 1 – Chapter 10: Introduction to Dante Controller

Level 1 – Chapter 10 – Introduction to Dante Controller

Now is a good time to give you an introductory tour of Dante controller in each level of the Dante certification program. We’ll show you some features of the software, so you’re an expert by the end of level three. In level one, we’ll see how to name devices and channels, perform basic device configuration, how to make connections between devices and how to read the status and events tabs. Let’s start from the beginning.

Before making any subscriptions or configuring devices, we need a good naming convention. Most factual errors happen when you don’t have a good naming structure. If you want to keep human error to a minimum, using a consistent naming convention helps a lot. This is a really nice feature of Dante.

You don’t have to work with IP addresses. You can just go by names you assign to devices. Once you have your Dante devices and your computer plugged into the same network, launch Dante controller. Dante controller is a free application you can download from Get dante.com and it’s available for both PC and Mac.

Once it is open, we recommend that you verify the selected network interface card is correct. To do that, simply click the configured Dante interfaces icon and see if the nick is right for the primary network. If not, select the correct interface from the bar here. If you choose the current interface, you’ll be able to see its IP and MAC address.

If it is the first time Dante controller is running in your computer, you may be presented with the same window. One notable thing about Dante controller is that it supports multiple language options. Using Dante controller in a familiar language makes navigation easier and reduces the risk of configuration errors. It also improves troubleshooting and makes it much easier for new users to learn.

Dante controller supported languages include English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Let me show you how to select your language. If you go to the view menu and select language, you’ll see the eight language options. When you install Dante controller, it automatically selects a language based on your region.

If you want to change it manually, you can do it right here. Another interesting feature of Dante controller is the interface view where you can switch between light and dark mode. To do this, just go back to the view menu and select theme. There you’ll find three options, auto dark and light.

Just pick the one you like the most. After that, the first window you’ll see is called the network view. This window allows us to see a bit of information about every device at a glance, such as firmware, clocking, network status, and more. This view is great for getting a high level overview of all the devices.

Remember, Dante controller will automatically discover all Dante devices on your network along the top of the screen running horizontally. We have transmitting devices down the left side of the screen running vertically. We have receiving devices. Keep in mind that many Dante devices are both transmitters and receivers.

A mixing console with Dante inputs and outputs would be a good example. If you see a device showing up as both a transmitter and a receiver, don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal. Interestingly, Dante device names aren’t just for your benefit.

They’re used by the Dante devices themselves and every time you want to make a connection between a transmitter and a receiver, we call it a subscription. When you make a subscription between a transmitter and a receiver, the receiving device remembers the name of the device and channel that it’s subscribed to. You can even unplug devices from the network and when they are plugged back in, they will reestablish their subscriptions based on the names you created for them. Suppose you change your DHCP server to a different IP range and reboot your devices.

The Dante devices will still reconnect and restore functionality because they discover each other just like Dante controller discovered them, and the devices will look for device names, not MAC or IP addresses. That also means that you want to name your devices and channels before you make subscriptions. If you make a subscription and then change the device’s names, you will lose their subscriptions and you’ll see a triangle with an exclamation mark. We’ll show you in a minute.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to create a unique name for every device, but you’ll probably find it isn’t necessary to label every individual channel. For example, a stage box with inputs that change frequently might be left with basic channel numbers like input one, input two, and input three. On the other hand, the outputs of a digital mixer, the IO of A DSP and the input channels of an amplifier could be descriptively labeled so you can easily remember what they’re used for. Ultimately, it’ll be up to you and your environment.

Every Dante system is unique and these are just some simple guidelines to get you started. Let’s suppose I want to name this receiver and its channels. If I double click a device, Dante controller opens a new window called the device view. This view shows us more detailed information about a single device At the top of the device view.

I can change which device we are looking at by using this dropdown menu to name the receiver, we’ll go to the device config tab. I click in the rename device field and start typing the name I want. Once I finish, I click apply and that’s it. The device has been renamed to name the individual receive channels.

We’ll go to the receive tab in the same device view window and select the line we want to modify. As soon as I hit enter or select another line, you’ll see the name take effect. Now, if we look back at the routing matrix, you’ll notice the channels I’ve named don’t have a number anymore, but the others do. When Dante controller sees a channel without a name, it automatically leaves the channel number that was there before.

If you want a channel number to show up, just make the number part of your channel name. The more channels the device has, the more useful it is to insert a channel number as a prefix. Sometimes it’s good to keep track of where we are like pages in a book. Okay, we’ve learned how to label receive channels in the receive tab.

It stands to reason we’ll label transmit channels in the transmit tab. I’ll just add a few labels quickly and we’ll move on. Once you have a good naming convention, we can proceed to make subscriptions between devices. You can use the plus and minus buttons to expand and collapse channel views on any given device.

If you prefer seeing the device channels in blocks, there is an option in the main toolbar called channel groups. When channel groups is active, device channels in the routing tab are grouped into sets. This is very handy As the list of devices grows, it makes it easier to view and edit channel subscriptions for devices with large numbers of channels such as digital mixers with 64 or 128 channels. By default, the groups are named from one to 16, 17 to 32 and so on.

However, some devices may also use custom grouping configurations in the toolbar. If you click this icon called filter pane, you’ll get a panel where you can filter devices. For instance, we can choose to view only video devices or only audio devices operating at a specific sample rate. We also have these fields where we can filter devices using a text string.

If your names contain strings with a room number like Studio C or a system name like BGM, any of these can be used to quickly filter the device list to make or break a subscription. All you need to do is click at the intersection of the Transmit and receive channel. You want to connect Here we are making and breaking a video subscription. We can also go over to the audio side and do the same in an audio environment.

Here we establish a subscription and then we cancel it. You may notice that audio subscriptions take effect more quickly than video subscriptions. If a Dante AV receiver needs to change to a new input at a different frame rate or resolution, it will need to resynchronize its signal and once its video signal starts outputting, the display may need to resynchronize as well. If you want things to switch more quickly, standardize your system on a single resolution and frame rate.

Okay, we’ve shown you how to make a single connection, but sometimes you need to make a bunch of subscriptions with a single click. If we hover over the corner here, we’ll see shading fill in across the grid indicating we can make a mass one-to-one subscription. Just press control on your keyboard and click to make the subscription to break it, add shift, so you get shift control. Click.

While we’re here, this might be a good time to show you a few simple troubleshooting tips. If we get a green check mark on a subscription, that is a good thing. It means the subscription is working, but we could get other icons that tell us if something is wrong. I’ve set up two problems on this mixer as examples to show you failure scenarios and how to fix them.

Let’s start with something we previously mentioned. I’ve set up a name on these devices and they all have a subscription. What happens if I modify the name on this other device and then power cycle it? Well, you notice that when it comes back to life, it appears with a different icon.

If we expand the channels, we’ll see. They all have an icon with a triangle and an exclamation mark. If I hover over the connection, I’ll get a tool tip with a description of the problem. This one says Subscription status.

Unresolved cannot find this channel on the network. This is telling us that the device is no longer on the network or has been renamed. If we rename it back to its previous name, this is immediately corrected. Another option would be to simply unsubscribe and resubscribe to the channels.

Again, creating subscriptions using the new name instead of the old one. Here we have another icon with a circle and slash through it. This icon indicates that Dante controller sees the device we are trying to subscribe to, but there is something wrong with the link. Again, if I hover over the connection, I’ll get a tool tip with a description of the problem.

This one says Subscription status is incorrect. Channel format from source and destination do not match. This is telling us the sample rate is different between the two devices. Indeed, if I use the filter pane in the toolbar and filter by a 96 kilohertz sample rate, I see the transmitter is the only device at 96 kilohertz.

As a result, it won’t be able to communicate with other devices on the network. In previous chapters when we talked about sample rates, we mentioned that Dante controller will stop you from making a subscription between devices with mismatched sample rates, right, so how did this happen? Well, what happened was that I made the subscription when the devices had matching sample rates, but then I changed the sample rate on one of the devices. When you changed sample rate, Dante devices don’t immediately throw away the subscription.

Maybe you’re moving all your devices to a new sample rate and you still want to maintain your subscriptions to fix this. All devices that need to communicate with one another need to be set to the same sample rate. To do that, I’ll double click the device name which opens the device view. Right now I’m looking at the mixer and again, you’ll see the alert icons in here, which is useful.

If I go to the device config tab, I’ll see an option to change the sample rate. This particular device offers sample rates of 48 kilohertz and 96 kilohertz. Let’s change the mixer from 96 kilohertz to 48 kilohertz. You’ll see the mixer icons change to a successful subscription, but I still have a problem with this channel.

It has the same triangle with an exclamation mark We saw before. Remember that this means the mixer can’t find the source device on the network. As we saw before, it could be that the name of the device changed or it could also be that the device is not on the network anymore. If we look in device view receive tab, we can see the channel name and device name.

Here we see this one is coming from the lectern mic on stage. If I look across my transmitters, there’s no device listed with that name. If I look on the stage, I can see the microphone isn’t connected to the network. I’ll run down there to plug it in, wait for it to be discovered by Dante controller, and then the subscription will be restored automatically.

While we’re in here, you’ll notice these little speaker icons. These tell us if there is signal present on the channel. When the signal rises above the minimum threshold of minus 60 DBFS, it will turn green. If the signal does not reach the minus 60 DBFS threshold, it looks grayed out.

If you are ever in a situation where you aren’t getting signal to a receiver, these signal indicators can be helpful to figure out where signal is present and where it isn’t. The next tab over is the status tab, which shows a great deal of information about firmware for the manufacturer’s device as well as the Dante interface. At the bottom, you’ll see detailed information on the network port including the MAC address if you need it. Next comes the latency tab.

If you remember, in the introduction to latency chapter, we talked about what latency is and we can see how much time we are giving streams from each source and how long it is actually taking. We’ll go deeper into this topic in level two in the device config tab. In addition to the sample rate, you can also see it allows for pull up and pull down rates. Don’t worry, we’ll cover this in Dante certification level three for now.

You should leave this set to none. Over here it talks about preferred encoding. This refers to the bit depth or word length. This device is fixed at 24 bit, so it’s telling us we can’t change anything here.

However, I can look at another device that allows us to use 24 bit or 32 bit audio. As you can see, we can have multiple device view windows open at the same time. This is great for comparing settings between devices or monitoring multiple devices at a time. Finally, we have the network config tab, which will also cover in level two.

This is where you set the device to get an IP address dynamically or use a static address. We can also change the topology between switched and redundant network modes. If we go back to the network view, we start out in the routing tab, but the other tabs have a lot of useful information in them as well. As a matter of fact, if you ever need to contact Audinate for support, I highly recommend sending a screenshot of the next three tabs, device info clock status, and network status.

A picture is worth a thousand words and these tabs are no exception. The device info tab will list every device on the network. In addition to the device name, we’ll also see the manufacturer’s model number, the device firmware, and the Dante firmware. Sometimes it’s also helpful to see the IP addresses of the devices and their negotiated port speeds.

If a one gigabit device is only showing a 100 megabit connection, that might indicate a bad cable or a problem. With the switch port in the clock status tab, I often look to make sure there is only one clock leader. In the network status tab, we can get a feel for how much traffic is being sent and received by each device, what the latency settings are, and whether there are any latency or packet errors. Finally, we come to the events tab.

There are two key things to know about this tab. First, these log entries are not stored anywhere on the network. Dante devices simply transmit their log entries to any instance of Dante controller running on the network and Dante controller will capture these and remember them. If something happened on your network, you can’t simply launch Dante controller after the fact to get the log entry.

It’s too late. Some people just let Dante controller run in the background so they can capture these log entries as they occur. The second thing to understand is that a lot of people overreact to what they see in here. They assume everything is an error message, but that’s not always the case.

For instance, if we look at these log entries, we’ll see this says a device was elected as the clock leader. That’s not a problem. That’s normal operation. One of the most common calls we get from Dante beginners is that they launch Dante controller and then they turn all their Dante devices on.

Imagine this, every time a new Dante device comes online, a new clock election takes place, so in their event log, they might see the clock leader change hands several times, and of course they think something is wrong, but again, that’s the normal process. If you ever want to save or clear messages, you have buttons at the bottom to do just that, what we usually tell the beginner is to simply clear their log and then watch for future changes. Ignore that first moment where everything is turning on and then watch as the system stabilizes. Let’s summarize this tour of Dante controller.

First, double check in the configure Dante interfaces section to make sure that you have the right nick selected for the primary port. A connection between a transmitter and a receiver is called a subscription. Having a naming convention is a good way to reduce human error. Make sure to name devices first and then make subscriptions.

If you change a device’s name. After making subscriptions, your subscriptions will be lost. Hovering over error indicators will let you know what is happening in the network and give you an idea of how to fix it. Thanks for watching this chapter and we’ll see you in the next one.