Dante AV-A Network Solution Turtle AV

Is Dante AV-A Ready for Prime Time?

Turtle AV

If you’ve been working with AV-over-IP for a while, you’ll know that 1Gb JPEG 2000 solutions are hardly new. We already have products capable of moving high-quality, low-latency video around an IP network. 

So when Dante AV-A arrived, the question for me was not “Do we really need another AV-over-IP technology?” 

The more interesting question was: 

What happens when video becomes part of the Dante ecosystem that so many of us are already using for audio? 

That, I think, is where Dante AV-A starts to get interesting. 

It’s not really about JPEG 2000 

Dante AV-A is built around the ASPEED AST1530/1535 platform. It supports up to 4K60 4:4:4 video, sub-frame latency and standard 1Gb networking, while bringing video and Dante audio into the familiar Dante routing and management environment.   

Those are good specifications, but I wouldn’t position AV-A as being about a “better JPEG 2000 picture.” 

There are already capable JPEG 2000 AV-over-IP solutions in the market. 

The real attraction is what Dante adds around the video. 

With Dante AV-A, audio and video can be independently routed, with Dante Controller providing a common environment for configuration and routing. Dante Domain Manager and Dante Director extend this into system management.   

For an integrator already deploying Dante audio, that makes the conversation quite different.

Instead of designing one ecosystem for audio and another for video, you can start thinking about them as parts of the same networked AV infrastructure. 

Native Dante audio is a bigger deal than it first appears 

This is probably one of my favourite aspects of Dante AV-A. 

AV-A gives you 2x2 channels of native Dante audio, independently routable from the video. 

Think about a typical meeting room or classroom. Perhaps the picture needs to go to one or more displays, while the audio needs to go to the room's DSP and then on to amplifiers or loudspeakers.

With AV-A, those don't necessarily need to follow the same path. 

You can have:
Source → AV-A encoder → network → AV-A decoder → display 
while the Dante audio can be routed separately into the audio system. 

It's a simple idea, but in a real installation, that flexibility can be extremely useful. There is one limitation worth remembering, though: AV-A provides 2x2 Dante audio channels. If your design requires more independently routable Dante channels from each video endpoint, that's something you need to account for from the beginning. 

4K60 over 1Gb is attractive, but don't forget the network 

Another obvious attraction is 1Gb.

Dante AV-A supports video up to 4Kp60 4:4:4 over standard 1Gb infrastructure—an attractive proposition for many commercial installations. However, “runs on a standard Gigabit network” should not be mistaken for “requires no network engineering.” 

As video is distributed to more destinations, multicast management becomes increasingly important. Uplink capacity must also be planned carefully as the number of streams and switches grows. NETGEAR’s AV switches are purpose-built to help manage combined audio and video traffic.

Although each AV-A endpoint operates at 1Gb, the overall switching architecture must still be designed for the traffic it will carry. This is not a limitation unique to AV-A; it is a fundamental consideration in any AV-over-IP deployment. 

A good example: Turtle AV's CHAZY family 

One manufacturer that has taken an interesting approach to AV-A is Turtle AV. The Australian manufacturer has built a broader networked AV portfolio covering AV-over-IP as well as Dante audio bridges, microphone preamps, amplifiers, adapters/converters, multiview and other networked AV products.   

Its AV-A platform is the CHAZY 4K family. 

Rather than just offering a transmitter and receiver, the range includes: 

I think this illustrates the broader opportunity with AV-A quite well. The conversation isn't just about replacing an HDMI cable with an encoder and decoder. It's about what manufacturers can build around a common networked AV architecture. 

So, is Dante AV-A ready for prime time? 

For mainstream commercial AV distribution, I think the answer is yes. If your project already has significant Dante audio infrastructure, AV-A becomes particularly interesting. You get high-quality, low-latency 1Gb video while bringing the video system closer to the Dante environment your integrators and technicians may already know. 

The bottom line 

For me, the big story with Dante AV-A isn't JPEG 2000. And it isn't simply 4K60 over 1Gb either. It's the possibility of making video a more natural part of the Dante infrastructure we're already designing for audio. That's potentially much more significant. 

For years we've talked about converged AV networks, while still treating audio and video as separate ecosystems sitting on top of the network. Dante AV-A takes another step toward changing that. 

So perhaps the question shouldn't be “Is Dante AV-A ready for prime time?”

Maybe it's:
“If we're already designing around Dante for audio, does it still make sense to keep video in a completely separate ecosystem?”

That is a conversation worth having. 

If you have any questions or require further assistance regarding our TURTLE Products, please feel free to contact us.

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