Audinate, the inventors of Dante, have released Dante Controller version 3.5, an updated release of the free networking management configuration and monitoring application.
Several powerful new features have been added providing advanced real-time network monitoring functionality, including multicast bandwidth usage, clock health monitoring and latency management statistical information. These enhancements enable you to quickly identify and fix potential issues on the network, while preserving Dante Controller’s ease-of-use, the company says.
“Many of the new features in Dante Controller 3.5 were implemented to directly meet specific customer requirements," said Gary Southwell, vice president of product management at Audinate. “Dante has rapidly become the market leader and the dominant media networking solution for audio networking. Dante Controller 3.5 includes many features that AV and IT professionals could only dream of a few short years ago.”
What’s New in Dante Controller 3.5
Enhanced Latency Reporting
· New histogram-based reporting and tracking of transmitter latencies - provides at-a-glance information about the latency performance of audio flows for supported devices.
· Latency histograms indicate if latency play-out settings are properly configured, and also provide an overall view of the health of the network.
· This feature helps solve one of the biggest challenges in the industry: it allows an operator to quickly see if an audio flow has been properly configured, and also indicates if underlying network issues could potentially develop into an audio quality problem.
Improved Clock Health Monitoring
· Clock health is now tracked on a per-device basis via dedicated performance histograms. This enables the quick and easy detection of difficult-to-diagnose network issues which are impacting clock accuracy - such as clock traffic bottlenecks, and low-performance external word clocks.
New Preset Tool Suite
· New preset system exposes XML-based network configuration presets for use in off-line configuration tools. This simplifies the setting up of new networks, and the reconfiguration of existing networks. Ideal for integrators, and large multi-use end-user networks.
· Presets are further enhanced to enable simpler switching between standard configurations and special event configurations. Provides greater confidence in the ability to share audio network configurations for multiple uses and/or user groups.
Redundant Network Connection
· Enables visibility of primary and secondary networks at all times. Redundant devices can still be seen and managed via the secondary network in the event of a problem with primary network connectivity.
· Simplifies redundant network set-up, and allows the operator to easily verify that both networks are properly configured.
· Provides real-time notifications about connectivity status on both primary and secondary networks.
New Channel Grouping Capability
· Allows simple viewing and configuring of large numbers of device channels, in groups of 16.
· Each group can be expanded then collapsed when set-up is complete.
