Dante made audio-over-IP the AV standard by using ordinary networks

In the mid-2000s digital audio networking meant proprietary cabling, complex configuration and vendor lock-in, so most sound systems still ran analog lines or single-vendor digital snakes.

Audinate, spun out of Australia's NICTA research lab, introduced Dante in 2006: it connects uncompressed, low-latency audio over standard IP networks with automatic discovery and routing, making audio networking as simple as plugging in a cable and seeing the device appear.

The first Dante-enabled device shipped in 2008; by 2012 leading brands — Yamaha, Shure, Harman, Focusrite, Allen & Heath — were building it in. Dante spread across live sound, installed AV, broadcast and education, and is now described by its owner and the trade press as the de facto standard for AV-over-IP, powering millions of devices from hundreds of manufacturers.

Run audio on standard IP; no special hardware

Standard Ethernet and IP meant no proprietary cabling or infrastructure.

Automatic discovery made installation plug-and-play for technicians.

Open licensing let hundreds of manufacturers embed the same protocol.

One ecosystem delivered interoperability across brands and products.

When a market is fragmented by proprietary protocols, the standard that runs on infrastructure everyone has wins: Dante's standard-IP, no-special-hardware design beat rival digital audio networks.

Dante expanded into video, control and cloud management, earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy in 2020, and passed one million manufactured devices in a single year in 2023; it remains the reference AV-over-IP platform.