Dante interface

[jmcc]

Hi - just wondering if anyone had any experience in playing Mediamonkey over the Dante interface (Audinate). Dante Via is supposed to allow any computer with an ASIO or WDM compatible soundcard to look like a Dante device on the network and then the Dante virtual soundcard on another system can play to it. At the moment all my music is on a shared server network drive so that I can access it from DLNA on the server and via a Windows PC with a Lynx soundcard running Mediamonkey as well (so that I can control it via Monkeytunes which doesn't work with DLNA). This configuration would allow me to have only a single instance of Mediamonkey on the server and the Lynx soundcard on the Windows PC would just look like a ASIO device, negating the need for Mediamonkey software on the PC and a "dual install" that causes problems from time to time in terms of the databases.

Any thoughts?

Best John

[Peke]

Hi,
It looks Interesting, have you tried to ask them about best approach?

[jmcc]

They allow for a trial install of the software, so I'll just give it a go and let you know. It doesn't look to be prohibitively expensive either.

[Peke]

Keep us posted.

[jmcc]

Generally good news - I downloaded the trial Dante Via app and the Dante Controller app, loaded Dante Via & Controller onto a Windows 2012R2 server running the Mediamonkey app and Dante Via on a Windows 10 PC with a Lynx soundcard and after launching Mediamonkey, changing its WASAPI output to target Dante and pressing a couple of OK prompts on either machine I was up and running. Installed Monkeytunes on top of the Mediamonkey install on the server and could connect and run "Remote for iTunes" from my Android phone.

Not quite perfect though; sometimes the system won't start playing after a reboot (timing issue for the Dante services and the Mediamonkey service?), but I'm investigating and will let you know. I also need to play around with their virtual soundcard product as well as it's cheaper.

[jmcc]

It's a bit picky but I got it all working in the end. Basically it doesn't like multiple NICs very much, you can't be running Hyper-V and you can't connect to the remote devices over RDP (TeamViewer seems to work fine). Wi-Fi is also a no-no and you must have at least one device on the network that can act as a clock - this is any Dante hardware device or a PC/Mac running Dante Via. What you can do is set up the Dante Virtual Soundcard on your media server, select this as a WASAPI output in MediaMonkey on the server set to run as a service and then stream this to any Dante enabled device on the network using the Dante Controller app - in my case a PC running Dante Via software which then outputs to the local soundcard. I've got it running over ASIO as well, though not as reliably.

As there are now Dante DACS (Focusrite Red range), Dante Power Amps and Dante active speakers, this means that you can stream to hardware directly without it needing to support DLNA. You can also stream to multiple endpoints simultaneously, facilitating a multi-room setup, routing controlled by the Dante Controller app. I haven't tried it, but you could stream from a Windows server to a Mac using MediaMonkey.

To actually play stuff you can control the MediaMonkey app via a DLNA controller anywhere on the network (PC/Android/etc.) or via MonkeyTunes and an iTunes remote app.

As said, it's a bit fiddly to set up and I feel the software needs to mature a bit, but as the most basic install would only require a copy of Dante DVS and a copy of Dante Via - available from the Audinate website as a bundle for 60 USD, it's pretty impressive.