There's a New Chipset for Dante AV—Here's What You Need to Know

The new Dante AV chipset being used in a presentation.
(Image credit: Audinate)

Audinate has partnered with ASPEED Technology to extend Dante AV to its popular AV-over-IP chipset. The new version, dubbed Dante AV-A, has been optimized to work on the ASPEED AST1530/1535 SoC (System on Chip) and is initially supported by 9 leading AV manufacturers.

Since 2004, ASPEED has designed AV-over-IP solutions to address the demands of video over distance and multimedia information delivery. The AST1530/1535 SoC is the next generation AV-over-IP chipset specifically designed for professional audio/video applications taking advantage of industry-standard IP networks.

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Dante AV-A delivers high-quality video up to 4Kp60 4:4:4 resolution and two channels of Dante audio that are instantly compatible with Dante audio products simplifying distributed AV system design. Independently routable audio and video flows means breaking out audio to installed DSPs, amps, or speakers is done with a single click. Its ultra-low video latency looks and feels natural for in room video distribution. As part of the Dante AV family of solutions, the familiar Dante Controller software handles all audio and video device routing while Dante Domain Manager provides IT-level management including continuous system monitoring, audit logs, and user access control.

"We are excited to partner with Audinate to bring Dante AV to the ASPEED platform,” stated Chris Lin, chairman and president of ASPEED.  “Our goal is to continue to add value to our manufacturing partners and their customers, and Dante AV is an increasingly requested feature.  This partnership allows us to prequalify Dante as part of the AST1530/1535 SoC and make it available to ASPEED customers through our SDK, making it as easy as possible for OEMs and ODMs to add Dante AV to their products.”

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"As one of the most widely used SoC in the AV-over-IP market, ASPEED is an important strategic partner for Audinate,” stated Aidan Williams, CEO of Audinate. “This partnership and the introduction of Dante AV-A is an important additional to the Dante AV family, making it easy for manufacturers to integrate Dante AV and giving customers the greatest choice of hardware products that are all interoperable through the Dante control and management software.”

Nine manufacturing partners have licensed Dante AV-A including AMX by Harman, Aurora Multimedia, AVPro Global, Cypress, GoMax, HDCVT, ProAVIT, SY Electronics, and WyreStorm. Audinate is featuring a demo of Dante AV-A using the new WyreStorm encoders and decoders at Booth 2821 at InfoComm.

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The addition of Dante AV-A and these Dante AV licensees continues the growing momentum with the Dante AV portfolio. Audinate’s Dante AV strategy is to provide integrators and end users with interoperability between manufacturers of AV-over-IP hardware. The different versions of Dante AV allow customers to solve for the right balance of video quality, bandwidth utilization and cost for their application, while still ensuring that products can be discovered, routed, and managed using Dante software tools like Dante Controller and Dante Domain Manager. The Dante AV family now includes:

  • Dante AV Ultra, designed for the most demanding applications, bringing end-to-end clock synchronization, ultra-low latency and the highest quality video. 
  • Dante AV-A, optimized for AV distribution for commercial installations. 
  • Dante AV-H, designed for applications that incorporate video software such as conferencing, higher education, and small production environments. 

The AVNetwork staff are storytellers focused on the professional audiovisual and technology industry. Their mission is to keep readers up-to-date on the latest AV/IT industry and product news, emerging trends, and inspiring installations.