With the announcement of Dante Ready coming to the MT 48, you might be wondering if this avenue is worth considering for your studio.
This article aims to clarify which might be beneficial for your usage.
What is Dante?
In short: Dante is a standardized audio transmission protocol using ethernet cabling, typically deployed in both the recording and live audio industries. It was developed by the Austrailian company Audinate.
Dante-capable audio hardware allows for quick routing through its software, allowing you to patch many brands of Dante enabled gear together over ethernet connections in place of standard analog cabling. It is all controlled and maintained through one piece of centralized software.
It is not inclusive to brand - many brands of hardware offer Dante capable devices and so long as a device features Dante, it can be used with (or routed to) any other Dante hardware.
Its benefit: you can transmit many channels of audio over a single ethernet cable, significantly streamlining complex hardware setups that would otherwise rely on many instances of analog (TRS, XLR, etc) cables, over great distances.
Add in the fact that ethernet can travel significantly further than it's analog cable counterparts, and it's ideal in certain recording and especially live audio scenarios.
Do I need Dante?
In short: not necessarily.
If you have other Dante capable hardware, than it can significantly expand (and simplify) your workflow.
If you have no other Dante hardware, nor plan to get any, then no.
Dante ready on the MT 48 means that while the MT 48 does have the ability operate over Dante, a license through Audinate must be purchased in order to unlock this feature.
Therefore, please consider your full setup and intentions carefully.
Even if the MT 48 you have is Dante ready, it can still be used over USB C connection as a standalone audio interface without the capability unlocked.
How does it differ to AES67 Ravenna?
AES67 is another system of Audio over IP designed around interoperability and utilizes a set of standards that must be met for compliance.
Ravenna is simply a form of AES67.
AES67 offers the transport of high quality and high channel audio transmission over low latency as specificied by AES (Audio Engineering Society.)
Whilst the MT 48 is initially designed around ease of use over USB C, it also natively features AES67 capability much like Merging Technology's other products such as the Hapi and Anubis.
Configuration over AES67 is generally through device-specific utilities, not a centralized interface as with Dante.
One major benefit: the MT 48 can seamlessly integrate with another MT 48 or Merging Technologies interface through Peering- a direct connection together over ethernet. This is exclusive to AES67 Ravenna functionality. In this way, you can expand your IO capabilities by simply connecting two MT 48's together over ethernet whilst one is USB'd to the recording computer (or an MT 48 to an Anubis/Hapi.)
Neumann also offers AES67-capable monitors. For complex multichannel monitoring setups, it may make more sense to set up multicast monitoring streams in AES67 mode.
Generally speaking, AES67 setups tend to have more of a learning curve upfront (especially on the networking end,) and have quite specific networking requirements to successfully incorporate.
Dante can also transmit AES67 streams if the devices in question is AES67 capable. You can therefore use AES67 within Dante (although this capability is locked at 48 kHz.)
If you have more questions on MT 48 Dante, please refer to our FAQ here:
https://help.neumann.com/hc/en-us/articles/23231764106002-MT-48-Dante-FAQ