Dante is where IT meets audio. In plain terms, it lets you carry a big pile of channels of uncompressed sound over the same kind of Ethernet cable that runs your internet, with almost no latency and no drama.
Here's the thing though. A lot has changed since most people last read about it. What used to be shorthand for "audio over a network cable" has grown into a full platform that moves audio, video, control, and management over one connection. So this is the current picture, not the 2019 one.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What Dante actually is
Dante stands for Digital Audio Network Through Ethernet. It's made by a company called Audinate, and it's a mix of software, hardware, and network protocols that sends uncompressed, multi-channel, low-latency digital audio over standard Ethernet.
That's the IT-plus-sound angle right there. You're running your audio down the same kind of cable that carries your network traffic, using the same kind of switches. No special exotic wiring, no separate audio backbone.
And it scales. A small setup might only need a handful of channels. A big install can push well over a thousand channels on a single Gigabit network while keeping latency low enough that nobody notices. That flexibility is a big part of why it caught on.
How Dante works under the hood
The basics are simpler than you'd think. Your Dante devices plug into a standard network switch, same as any other networked gear. From there, three things make it all work together.
- Clock sync is handled automatically using IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol, or PTP. Every device on the network stays locked to the same clock, so nothing drifts and your channels stay in sync.
- Routing happens in software using an app called Dante Controller. It's basically a virtual patchbay — one canvas where you connect outputs to inputs by clicking on a grid.
- The network itself does the heavy lifting, carrying all those channels down one cable.
The part that makes engineers relax is the lack of extra boxes. No protocol converters, no separate matrix router, no rack of adapters. You patch it in software and it's done. Less is more, and Dante leans into that hard.
Dante isn't just audio anymore
This is the big update, and it's the reason the old "Dante is an audio protocol" framing feels dated now. Audinate positions Dante as a full AV-over-IP platform — audio, video, control, and management — spanning more than 4,000 products from over 600 manufacturers.
Video came in with Dante AV back in 2019, bringing the same ease of moving audio over IP to moving video over IP.
Here's the honest differentiator. A lot of rival systems treat audio as cargo, bundled inside the video stream. Dante AV keeps audio and video as separate, independently routable signals. That's the audio heritage showing through — the sound isn't an afterthought riding along with the picture. And every edition, video or audio-only, shows up in that same Dante Controller canvas. One tool for the whole system.
The three Dante AV editions
There are three flavors of Dante AV, and they exist because different jobs have different needs.
- Dante AV-Ultra is built for the highest demands. It delivers audio and video with deterministic latency to solve sync issues, and it supports control routing of USB HID, serial, and IR over IP, plus HDCP.
- Dante AV-H uses standard H.264/H.265 compression in software. Because those codecs live on so many off-the-shelf processors, it keeps the video side accessible without needing specialized silicon.
- Dante AV-A delivers visually lossless video up to 4Kp60 4:4:4, with 2x2 channels of independently routable Dante audio that drop right into any Dante audio setup.
Audinate also has a newer codec called Colibri, built specifically for AV-over-IP distribution. It's aimed at visually lossless quality with very low latency.
The newer cloud and management tools
If it's been a few years since you looked at Dante, this whole category is new. The platform grew a bunch of cloud and management tools that simply didn't exist last time around.
- Dante Director is a cloud-based management platform for small to medium networks. No server setup, no hypervisor to babysit — you get up and running fast and expand as you go.
- Dante Connect brings Dante workflows into the cloud, aimed squarely at Tier 1 broadcasters, with support for AWS and GCP.
- Dante Media Encryption handles the security side: secure access controls, network segmentation, policy management, and encryption key management.
- Dante Virtual Soundcard Pro turns a computer into a Dante endpoint and now scales up to 128x128 channels at 96kHz, with a virtual machine install option for people going fully virtualized.
The through-line here is that Dante stopped being just a thing you plug into a switch. It's now something you manage, secure, and run in the cloud too.
Why Dante became the standard
- Dante has roughly 14x the adoption of its nearest competitor, up from 12x the year before.
- Around 85% of AES67-compatible products on the market are Dante, according to independent adoption data.
- Over 1 million Dante nodes have shipped across the ecosystem.
- More than 300,000 AV professionals worldwide are trained and Dante-certified.
How Dante compares to other networked audio
Dante isn't the only way to move audio over a network, so let's be fair about the alternatives.
AVB works well but needs specific AVB/TSN-compatible switches, which makes your infrastructure more restrictive. Its adoption is well behind Dante's.
AES67 is an open, royalty-free standard. It shines when you've got gear from different manufacturers that all need to coexist. Worth knowing: recent versions of Dante include AES67 support, so Dante can play nice in those mixed networks instead of walling itself off.
On the broadcast side, Audinate announced expanded support for SMPTE ST 2110-30 and AES67 in September 2025, which tightens Dante's fit with broadcast production workflows. If you want to dig deeper, the reporting from Audinate's NAB 2025 showing at Mixonline covers where the platform is heading.
The honest bottom line: Dante isn't built on open standards the way AES67 is. But it wins hard on adoption and ease of use, and that's usually what tips the scale when you're specifying a system. If you're building out a stage rig where the mixing board is the hub, our roundup of the best digital mixing boards for live sound is a good companion read, since a lot of those consoles speak Dante natively.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do I need special switches for Dante?
No, Dante runs on standard managed Gigabit network switches — you don't need Dante-branded or proprietary hardware. That's one of its biggest advantages over something like AVB, which requires specific AVB/TSN-compatible switches. For larger networks, just make sure your switch supports the right settings like QoS.
Is Dante uncompressed?
Yes, Dante audio is uncompressed, multi-channel, and low-latency, so you're not losing quality to a codec on the audio side. The video editions are a different story — Dante AV-H uses H.264/H.265 compression, while AV-A aims for visually lossless quality. The audio stays clean throughout.
What's the difference between Dante and AES67?
AES67 is an open, royalty-free interoperability standard, while Dante is Audinate's proprietary platform. The practical part: recent versions of Dante include AES67 support, so Dante devices can talk to other AES67 gear in mixed-manufacturer setups. Dante gives you more features and management tools on top of that baseline.
Can Dante carry video now?
Yes, Dante carries video through Dante AV, which launched in 2019 and now spans over 100 products. Unlike some rivals, Dante AV keeps audio and video as separate, independently routable signals instead of bundling the audio inside the video stream. All of it shows up in the same Dante Controller app.
How many channels can one Dante network handle?
A single Gigabit Dante network can carry from a handful of channels up to well over a thousand, depending on your devices and configuration. The actual count comes down to bandwidth, sample rate, and how your gear is set up. Higher sample rates use more bandwidth, so channel counts drop as the rate climbs.
Final Thoughts
Dante started as a clever way to send audio down a network cable, and it's turned into the backbone that a lot of the AV world quietly runs on. Audio, video, control, cloud management — all on standard Ethernet, all in one app. That's the merging of IT and sound in a nutshell.
If you're just getting into networked audio, don't let the acronyms scare you off. Plug a couple of Dante devices into a switch, open Dante Controller, and patch a channel. Once you see how easy the routing is, the rest clicks into place fast.
Some of the links within this article are affiliate links. These links are from various companies such as Amazon. This means if you click on any of these links and purchase the item or service, I will receive an affiliate commission. This is at no cost to you and the money gets invested back into Audio Sorcerer LLC.