Dante Certification Level 3 – Chapter 04: Dante Director

Level 3 – Chapter 04 – Dante Director

In level two, we introduce the concept of unmanaged versus managed Dante networks. Anytime a system is using Dante domain manager or Dante director, these are considered managed Dante environments. You’ve already seen how Dante domain manager works and what it’s used for. Now let’s turn our attention to Dante Director, how it differs from Dante domain manager and how it can help you manage your Dante networks from anywhere in the world.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Dante Director? Dante Director is a cloud-based SaaS platform that helps you manage your Dante devices and networks from anywhere in the world. It’s designed to give you control, visibility, and flexibility.

No matter where your installations are located. Dante director lets you connect to any of your Dante networks remotely as long as those networks are connected to the internet. From there, you can use Dante controller to access and manage your devices just like you would if you were sitting right next to them. That’s just the beginning.

Dante director also has its own web interface giving you even more tools to monitor and manage your sites. You can check the status of your networks and devices, organize them by location or project and switch between sites with just a few clicks. If you manage multiple clients or installations in different locations, this is a game changer whether you’re in the office, at home or on the road, you can stay in control. All you need is an internet connection and a web browser.

Another powerful feature is the ability to route audio between different IP subnets. Similar to DDM, and when I say routing audio between different IP subnets, I mean Dante director does not carry Dante audio across the internet. It does provide remote control and management over the internet, but not audio transport. This lets you keep your devices separated for security or organizational reasons while still sending audio where it needs to go.

You can also manage who has access to each Dante system. Maybe you want to temporarily block someone’s access or change their permissions. You can do that instantly from anywhere. If you need to know who made changes on the network, Dante director keeps an event history that shows exactly who did what, where, and when.

It’s a simple way to stay informed and maintain accountability for developers or advanced users. Dante director also supports the Dante managed API. That means you can programmatically check the status of your sites and devices and even change channel subscriptions through your own custom software tools. With that in mind, Dante director does open up a world of possibilities for remotely managing Dante networks with more flexibility and efficiency than Dante domain manager in Dante director.

A site is simply a logical grouping of Dante devices that are on the same local area network. Think of it as a way to logically organize your devices maybe by location, by project, or by client within a single Dante director account. You can have multiple sites and each one works independently. If you’ve used Dante domain manager before, this idea might sound familiar.

In DDM, we call these logical groups domains. In Dante director, we call them sites, but really they serve a similar purpose. Whether it’s a domain in DDM or a site in director, the idea is the same. You are grouping Dante devices together so you can manage them more effectively.

Devices inside a site can communicate and route audio and video to each other using the same label based routing you’re already familiar with. In standard Dante networks and all devices in the same site are locked to the same network clock using PTP, this ensures synchronization within the site, which is critical for media performance. Each site has its own clock domain, which means if you change the clock settings in one site, it won’t affect the others. This isolation gives you flexibility and helps prevent unwanted clocking conflicts.

When you’re managing multiple environments, even though multiple sites can exist within the same Dante director account devices in one site won’t see or interact with devices in a different site. This is by design. It keeps your network secure and easy to manage. Sites can also live on physically separate networks and even in totally different geographic locations.

You could have one site for your New York office, another for your studio in la, and both can be managed under the same Dante director account, and even if your site includes devices on different IP subnets, you can still route audio between them as long as they’re part of the same site that gives you flexibility in how you design and scale your network. Getting started with Dante director is easy. All you need is a web browser. Just head over to director dot Dante dot cloud and you’ll land on the login page.

The first time you access it, you’ll be asked to create a password for your account. After that, it works like any other cloud platform. You simply log in using your email and password. Once your Dante director account is up and running, you’ll also be able to connect Dante controller to it.

That’s what makes Dante director really powerful. You’ll be able to manage and configure your Dante devices remotely using the same Dante controller interface you’re already used to. We’ll show you exactly how to connect Dante controller to director in just a bit. If you are just testing things out, you can also sign up for a free trial.

Just click the trial option on the login page and it’ll take you to a registration form that gives you 30 days to explore Dante director at no cost. Keep in mind that Dante director is a subscription based service, so after your trial ends, your account will begin billing based on the number of devices enrolled each month. Let’s go back to the login page and sign in with our credentials. Once we’re in, the first thing we need to do is create a site as that’s the starting point for organizing your Dante devices.

Select the site’s link in the top right corner of the home screen, then select the create new site button. Choose the name, which for us will be meeting room and pick an icon. To represent the type of installation, we’ll choose the office’s icon for this site. Once done, just click add site and you’ll be brought back to the sites page with a notification that a site has been successfully created.

If your user profile has access to more than one Dante director account, you can switch between them easily. Just use the dropdown menu in the top right corner of the screen to choose which account you want to work with. While most Dante director functions can be done remotely, there’s one thing that must be done locally. The first time you connect a Dante device to director, your computer will need to be on the same local area network as the device.

Once that initial device enrollment is complete, everything else can be handled remotely. Alright, now that we’ve created our first site, let’s go ahead and enroll some devices. First, let me highlight something here. All devices you want to enroll into a site and Dante director need to have access to the internet.

We’ll use Dante controller to enroll devices into Dante director. There are two ways to connect Dante controller to Dante director. One is from inside director itself and the other is by starting from Dante controller. For now, let’s use the shortcut from within director.

At the top right corner of the interface, you’ll see a button that says Open Dante Controller. When you click that, it launches Dante controller and it will immediately be connected to director with your current site selected and the devices within that site visible. This is really handy when you’ve already enrolled devices into different sites and just want to jump right in and start working. Since we haven’t enrolled anything yet, let’s click the add devices option.

That takes us straight into the enrollment flow in Dante controller. From there, we select the devices we want to add. In our case, we’ll pick these four here. Make sure the assigned domain field matches the site we want to place them in and then click okay.

You’ll notice that once a device is enrolled, it no longer appears in the unmanaged domain, just like what we saw when using Dante domain manager. Now let’s look at the other option. If you’re already working in Dante controller and you want to connect to Dante director, it’s easy. Just click the DDM slash Dante director login icon.

In the toolbar. You’ll need to enter the Dante director URL, which is device do director dot Dante dot cloud, along with the correct port number, either 4, 4, 3, which is the standard port for secure http s web traffic, or 84 43, which serves as an alternative secure port that can bypass certain network restrictions and then log in using your Dante director username and password. If it’s your first time connecting to the server, Dante controller will display a security fingerprint popup. This is simply a confirmation that the connection is secure, so go ahead and accept it.

Once you’re connected, you’ll see a domain dropdown menu at the top right corner of Dante controller. Just like when you’re using DDM here, you can choose which site you want to manage. If your goal is to enroll new devices, you need to stay in the unmanaged domain so you can see all devices currently on the local network. From there, just go to the devices menu and select connect devices to DDM slash Dante director.

Then follow the same steps we went through earlier. Choose your devices, assign them to a site and confirm the action. Dante director helps you monitor the health of your network with site status. Once we enroll devices into sites, we can go back to the sites page in Dante director and see that each site card shows its current status at a glance.

You can also dive deeper into the details by clicking into a site and opening the status tab. The first thing you’ll notice is the use of icons. Green check marks mean everything’s looking good and there are no issues detected. It’s a quick visual way to confirm that your system is healthy.

The connectivity section gives you insight into which devices are currently online. It’ll also let you know if there are any problems, like if two devices happen to share the same name, which causes conflicts. Next, we have subscriptions. This area shows whether your routes between devices are working as expected.

If there’s a problem such as an offline device or mismatched audio format between two endpoints, you’ll see it flagged here. Sometimes issues can also occur if you’ve hit a transmit flow limit or if something else is preventing audio from being delivered properly. Then there’s latency. This tells you if any media packets are being dropped because of latency issues.

That usually means a device couldn’t keep up with the current flow settings. If that happens, you might want to increase the latency setting for those devices or make some adjustments to your network topology to keep things running smoothly. Finally, the clocking section shows the sync status for the entire site. If there’s a conflict like multiple devices trying to act as clock leader or one device that can’t sync properly, you’ll see it reported here.

This helps ensure your audio stays synchronized across all devices in the site. Alright, let’s go back to Dante director. You’ll notice we’ve added two more sites and they’re both showing green status indicators. That’s a good sign.

It means there are no issues with those two sites and everything is working as expected. However, the site we created at the end is showing a problem. At first glance, connectivity, clocking and latency all look fine. They have green check marks, but the subscription status is red, which means something’s not right.

If we click on that site, we get a more detailed view. There’s a message indicating that the device called meeting room DSP has a subscription issue. From here, we can launch Dante controller to investigate further. Once it opens, we find the DSP and hover over the red subscription indicator to get more information.

It tells us that the subscription is unresolved because the transmit device isn’t visible on the network. That gives us a clear explanation of the issue and some direction on how to fix it. If we double click the DSP to open the device view, we can see which transmitter it was previously subscribed to. In this case, it was the A-V-O-U-S-B device and it was subscribed to channel seven and eight.

Let’s go and check the unmanaged domain. There’s a chance that someone accidentally moved the A-O-U-S-B device there, and yes, there it is. All we need to do now is enroll it back in the correct site that it was originally assigned to. After that, when we return to the Dante director status page, the red subscription error disappears.

Now that we are talking about devices, let’s do a deep dive into the devices page. In Dante director, the devices page gives you a centralized view of all Dante devices that have been assigned to a specific site. From here, you can quickly sort and filter devices by name. You can also get live status indicators and you can change the importance ranking of each device.

Let’s take a look at the device importance rankings. This is a really helpful addition to Dante director that gives you more control over how device status is evaluated and displayed across sites. With this feature, you can now assign each device one of three I importance levels, high, normal or low. By default, devices are set to normal, but what does that actually mean In practice?

When a device is marked as low importance, it won’t contribute to the overall status indicators of its site. That’s useful in cases where you have devices that aren’t critical to the system’s performance. Maybe it’s a temporary or experimental device that’s been added for testing purposes. Even if that device shows a warning or error, it won’t bubble up and trigger a red or yellow status at a higher level, helping to avoid false alarms or unnecessary visual distractions in your monitoring dashboard.

On the other hand, devices marked as high importance are treated as critical. If something goes wrong with one of these, you’ll see that reflected immediately drawing your attention right away. This is ideal for devices that are essential to your system like primary DSPs, PA systems or important endpoints. This ranking system lets you prioritize the devices that matter most while reducing clutter from devices that aren’t mission critical.

It gives you a clearer, more accurate picture of system health and helps you respond more quickly to the issues that truly need your attention. Let’s take a look. Alright, We’re now looking at the devices page Within this site. As you can see, I’ve organized the devices into three different levels of importance.

You can choose how you want to view them either in a tile layout or as a list. It’s totally up to you. On this page, we get a lot of useful information at a glance. For example, we can see whether the firmware is up to date and check the current status of each device.

Now let’s talk a bit more about the device importance ranking. I’ve assigned one device to the low importance level, another to high importance, and the rest are marked as normal. Just to show you how this works, I’ll make a change to the DSP that’s currently marked as high importance. This particular device is connected to several others.

If I disconnect it, you’ll notice that the system immediately gives us a warning in the site and also in the status tab. That’s because it’s considered a high priority device. I’ll go ahead and plug it back in so everything returns to normal. Next, I’ll disconnect this Bluetooth AV O from the network.

This one is set to low importance. As you’ll notice, nothing really happens. I don’t see a warning in the site or even in the status tab. That’s expected since a device with low importance is not critical to the system.

If you want to change the importance level of a device, it’s very simple. Just open up the device, scroll to the Dante director importance section and choose the new level you want to assign. While we’re in this view, we can also manage a number of other settings. You can change the device’s site or location, add a description or add comments that you want other users to see.

You can also update clocking settings or reboot the device directly from this page. That last one is especially helpful because if a device isn’t working properly, you don’t have to go onsite or call someone to do it for you. You can just reboot it remotely. Here’s another useful tip.

If you accidentally added a device to a site, no worries. You can simply move it back to the unmanaged domain. Just click the unassigned device button and confirm the change. Once that’s done, the device will no longer appear in our site.

If we check Dante controller, we won’t see it in our domain either, but if we look in the unmanaged network, we’ll find it listed there. Alright, let’s jump back into Dante director and head over to the devices section. Again, this time we’re going to select a speaker. Once we’ve got it open, let’s navigate to the receive tab.

Here’s where things get interesting. On this tab. Can see the names of the receiving channels, what they’re subscribed to, their current status, and whether or not they’re actually receiving a signal. In this case, we can see that both of these channels are actively receiving audio, which is exactly what we want to see from the same screen.

We also have the ability to change subscriptions. Let’s walk through that. If I click on edit, I can adjust which channels the speaker is subscribed to. Let’s say I don’t want channels one and two from the DSP anymore.

Instead, I want channels seven and eight. I just subscribed to the new channels, confirm the change, and now I’m sending channels seven and eight to the meeting room conference pc. If we take a look back in Dante controller, we can confirm that the subscription has updated. This kind of remote control is really handy, especially when you’re away from your computer.

You can do all of this from a phone or tablet, which is great. For quick adjustments on the go, before we get into the latency settings, there’s something we need to cover first, and that’s Dante Telemetry. If you remember, back to level one and level two, Dante devices report status updates and performance data to Dante controller in several key places such as the network status tab, the latency tab, the clock histogram, and the global event log. This type of reporting is called network telemetry and it’s incredibly helpful for visualizing your system and diagnosing any issues that might arise.

Telemetry data is automatically collected from your devices. It helps you monitor your system, analyze its performance, and detect problems early. With the right telemetry data in hand, a network administrator can quickly see whether the system is running smoothly or whether something needs attention. During troubleshooting, telemetry becomes even more valuable.

It helps you spot network patterns that can cause issues. With your real time audio and video with accurate real time telemetry, you gain confidence that your network is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. Dante controller also provides a lot of the same telemetry data, but there are some limitations. It only works while your computer is connected to the network and Dante controller is running.

The moment you close Dante controller, all of that telemetry data is lost. These are great tools when you’re working in a local environment with Dante controller open, but what if you want more persistent visibility? That’s where Dante director comes in. Because Dante director runs in the cloud, it opens up a whole new world of telemetry storage and visualization.

For Dante networks. To be clear, Dante director doesn’t replace Dante controller. These tools are complimentary. Director simply adds additional capabilities for networks that are managed through the Dante platform.

To take advantage of these new telemetry features, your network needs to meet two simple conditions. First, it needs internet access, and second, your Dante devices need to be enrolled into a Dante director site. Once those are in place, devices will start streaming telemetry data directly back to Dante director where it can be analyzed and reviewed whenever you need it. Let’s see how this works in practice.

Once you’re in Dante director, you can go to the site section, choose the site you want to monitor, head to the devices tab and select a specific device. From there, go to the receive tab and you’ll see these latency thumbnails. These are little charts for each received channel that’s currently subscribed to a transmitter or has been subscribed at any point within the last 30 days. These thumbnails refresh every minute and they show you the performance data for each subscribed channel.

They’re designed to help you quickly scan for issues or patterns that might stand out, and if something looks suspicious, just click on that mini chart and you’ll open up a full-time series chart for that channel. This is where things get really interesting. Each thumbnail shows you the devices latency setting represented by a blue line, as well as the actual arrival times of the packets, which appear as green bars. If the green bars stay consistently below the blue line, that’s a good sign.

It means the latency setting is high enough to handle the network performance and you’re not experiencing late packets or packet loss. However, if you see red bars spiking above the blue line, that’s a warning. It means the latency is probably set too low and you’re likely dropping packets. The time series chart lets you correlate performance issues like latency spikes with other events, such as changes in usage patterns, added devices, or network configuration changes.

By default, the chart shows you the last hour of latency data, but you can change the time range using the dropdown menu at the top left. For example, you can select the last day, last week, or even go back a full month. You’ll also see the transmitter name and receive channel listed at the top, right, so you always know exactly what you’re looking at. Using the Zoom tool, you can focus on exactly the moment you want to investigate.

Remember, Dante controller only shows latency in a histogram view. It doesn’t provide time series data that makes it much harder to trace issues back to a specific event. This feature really shows the power of Dante director. Dante director stores telemetry data for up to 30 days, so if something goes wrong, you’re not starting from scratch.

You can go back in time and see exactly what happened when it happened and why. Here we’re looking at a time series chart for channel one of a mixer. On the left, we see the latency in microseconds. Across the bottom is the time range reviewing with a Zoom slider that allows us to narrow down the range.

The chart shows us the current latency peak values, and the average. At first glance, everything looks fine and latency is stable, but when I extend the time range to view what happened a few days ago, I notice a huge latency spike. You can hover over any point in the chart to get detailed stats, including the latency setting and the minimum and maximum latency values for that moment in time. For instance, for us, this happened in the morning on October 3rd.

I immediately remembered that was the same time I had added some video transmitters to my network. They were multicasting video streams at 700 megabits per second, and at that point in time, I hadn’t enabled IGMP snooping on my network switch. The result, my 100 megabit AVIO interfaces were overwhelmed with multicast traffic that caused dropped packets, unstable clocking, and big latency issues. As soon as I turned on IGMP snooping, the network calmed down and the system stabilized.

If you’ve paused the view to explore older data, just hit the Go live button to jump back to the most recent data and resume real time updates. This is exactly why the time series chart is so useful. It helps you connect the dots between performance data and real world events so you can solve problems faster and with more confidence. Alright, let’s move on to user management.

Dante director includes a flexible system for controlling who has access, what actions they can take and where they can operate. Within your environment, you can invite additional users to your account and assign them different levels of access. Some might need full administrator rights while others can be restricted to specific sites. Just keep in mind that only administrator level users have the ability to create new sites, add other users, or view unassigned devices.

Let me show you. Let’s start by creating a new user from the home screen. We’ll head over to settings, then click on users. From there, we just enter the person’s email address and specify what level of access they should have, whether it’s full admin or limited to certain sites.

Once that’s done, click add user and as soon as the new user is created, they’ll receive an email invitation with a link. That link will allow them to set a password and enter their details to complete the setup process. If you want to check which users have access to a specific site, simply go to the homepage or use the main menu to select the site and then click site users. That will give you a list of everyone assigned to that site.

From there, you can also edit their privileges or simply delete them from that site. In addition to access control, Dante director now allows you to configure a ES 2 56 media encryption between supported devices helping protect audio flows at the channel level. Administrators can define encryption policies per transmit channel using strict mode when encryption is required or compatible mode when you’re working with legacy devices. Devices that do not support encryption are clearly flagged, making it easy to maintain visibility and compliance across large systems.

There’s no manual setup required. Dante handles all encryption key management internally. That means encryption happens automatically and securely with no extra latency and no impact on system performance. Okay, let’s talk about how Dante director works when you need to send audio between devices that are indifferent subnets.

As you might remember in an unmanaged Dante network, Dante controller is only aware of devices within a single subnet. If you have Dante devices spread across multiple network segments, Dante controller won’t be able to see all of them at the same time and it definitely won’t be able to create subscriptions between them. That’s where a managed Dante environment comes into play. By using Dante domain manager or Dante director, you unlock the ability to route audio across subnets as long as those subnets are properly routed and reachable.

We’ve already covered how this works in Dante domain manager, so now let’s see how to do it with Dante director. Before we begin, it’s important to remember that this only works if you’ve already set up a multi subnet network using a router or a layer three switch. That routing infrastructure is what allows the different subnets to communicate with each other. To get started all first enrolled devices into the same Dante director site, my first step is to connect my computer to the first subnet in our case.

That’s the 1 9 2 1 6 8 1 11 0 slash 24 range. I open Dante controller and once the devices appear, I click the DDM or Dante director login icon in the toolbar. From there, I enter the Dante director server, URL and port number, log in with my username and password and I’m in. Once connected, I open the devices menu and select connect devices to DDM or Dante director.

I then choose the devices I want to enroll into my meeting room site. It’s worth noting that during this whole process, both your computer and the devices must have internet access since Dante director is cloud-based. Next, I need to enroll devices from the second subnet. Since that subnet is connected to another switch, I simply move my laptop over to that switch and plug it in.

Of course, you could also ask someone else to do this if the other subnet is located somewhere else in the building. After connecting to the second subnet, which is 1 9 1 6 8 1 12 0 slash 24, I open Dante controller again right away, the devices on this subnet appear. I go back to Dante director, head to the status tab and select add devices. This launches Dante controller again and prompts me to enroll the devices into the meeting room site.

Just like before I make my selections confirm everything, and in a few moments, the devices from both subnets are enrolled into the same Dante director site. Before we can start routing audio between these devices, there’s one more important step. We need to make sure all devices are synchronized to the same PTP leader. As we can see, something’s not quite right.

A yellow triangle with an exclamation mark appears in the status tab. When I click it, a message pops up telling me that there are multiple grand leaders in this site. That’s a problem we need to fix to resolve it. I’ll navigate to the clocking tab inside the meeting room site and scroll down to the clock status and control section.

This area shows all enrolled devices neatly grouped by subnet. Here, I can manually configure clocking settings or let Dante director handle it automatically. In this case, I want to manage it manually so I can decide exactly which device leads the clocking hierarchy will choose the DSP as the preferred leader because I want it to always act as the clock source for the site in order to fully resolve the clocking issue. Each subnet needs at least one device with Uncast clocking enabled, this allows clocking information to cross subnets through the router and keep all devices synchronized.

The best practice is to enable unicast clocking on two devices per subnet. That way if one fails, the other can step in as a backup. Just keep in mind, you only need uncast clocking in multi subnet environments. It’s not required for single subnet installations.

I’ll go ahead and enable Uncast clocking on two devices from the first subnet and two from the second. After a few seconds, the configuration takes effect and the yellow warning in the status tab disappears. Everything is now synchronized and ready to go. I wanna be clear.

What we’ve just covered is a brief overview of the recommended clocking configuration when using Dante Director for cross subnet routing. This isn’t meant to be a deep dive into how Dante clocking works. If you are interested in learning more, I I highly recommend reviewing the clocking chapters from level two and level three. With our clocking now configured, we’re ready to route audio between devices on different subnets.

Let’s go back to the meeting room domain in Dante controller and create a subscription to the DSP. On the second subnet. The green check mark appears, and just like that the audio is successfully flowing between subnets. To wrap things up, let’s review what we’ve learned in this chapter.

Dante director is a powerful SaaS platform designed to help you manage Dante devices and networks from anywhere in the world. Whether you’re in the office, working from home, or supporting clients around the world, Dante director gives you the tools to stay connected and in control as long as your Dante devices have internet access. With Dante director, you can organize your devices into sites, monitor their status in real time, and even route audio across IP subnets, all while keeping everything securely segmented. It gives you the flexibility to manage multi-site environments, synchronize clocking across subnets, and quickly troubleshoot issues.

Using cloud stored telemetry and intuitive time series charts, you can assign different levels of access to users, track who made changes and when, and even prioritize which devices are most important to your system health. And the best part, all of this works seamlessly with Dante controller, so you can continue using the same interface you already know, but with even greater reach and flexibility, Dante director doesn’t replace Dante controller or Dante domain manager. Instead, it expands your capabilities by bringing Dante management into the cloud, helping you scale your operations work more efficiently, and support complex networks from virtually anywhere. Thanks for watching and see you in the next chapter.