I've recently attended an industry conference in person which had a modest AV setup with a few large screens for PowerPoint, a few microphones, speakers, and a camera for webinar attendees. There was one technician doing the audio, video and the production roles and asked him about Dante. He has done 2 of their training courses and his feedback was that he liked the technology but for these one-day events Dante is too much set up effort and they would need all compatible equipment. Some of his equipment was 10 years old and he was an expert in setting up with analogue cabling so he was happy as is.
He said at bigger events there are 3 people – 1xaudio tech, 1x video tech and 1xproducer each with specialist training. He says that there are lots of complications with the equipment and things like frame rates and colour issues that sometime need specialist troubleshooting. I am wondering if equipment will be increasingly software driven and some of these idiosyncrasies and low level details will be abstracted.
In his opinion, Dante would have to be more widespread adoption and simpler to configure for the smaller events. He also agreed that audio and video are essentially the same platform and Dante would ideally cover both reasonably completely. He thinks if you are using one digital cable you would want to use it across the whole setup rather than add yet another cable. I can see his point.
He said for more static set ups like universities, churches etc Dante would have more appeal because the set up effort would be more worthwhile.
My conclusion is that the market is a slow burn to act as a steady tailwind for Audinate, rather than a sudden switch to digital only, and there will no doubt be some consolidation across audio and video. Perhaps that translates to faster profit for Dante because there is the whole supply chain in between (e.g. bullwhip effect), so it may not be a slow burn investment. Also, their recent move into video is probably the right move.
