Australian invention revolutionises AV industry

What do Lord’s Cricket Ground, Wimbledon and Victoria’s Parliament House have in common? They’re all powered by audio networking technology created by an Australian entrepreneur.

Aidan Williams, a musician, R&D engineer and IT professional, realised there had to be a better way of controlling audio over long distances, to multiple locations, without a mess of analog audio cables.

Over three years, with backing from government-funded body National ICT Australia (NICTA), Williams and a team of researchers developed the foundations of Audinate’s Dante technology — a combination of software and hardware that delivers professional quality audio over a standard computer network, with perfect synchronisation and near-zero latency.

Audinate does away with heavy, expensive analog or multicore cabling, replacing it with low-cost, easily available CAT5e, CAT6 or fibre-optic cable for a simple, lightweight and economical solution. Dante integrates media and control for the entire system over a single, standard IP network.

These systems can easily scale from a simple pairing of a console to a computer, to large-capacity networks running thousands of audio channels. Because Dante uses logical routes instead of physical point-to-point connections, the network can be expanded and reconfigured at any time with just a few mouse clicks. Since audio is transmitted digitally, the users don’t have to worry about the common analog challenges of interference from other electrical equipment, crosstalk between cables or signal degradation over long cable runs.

Audinate’s Dante technology transforms audio into a smart, connected medium that can be used for a huge range of professional audio and commercial needs.

In 2006, Audinate became the first company to spin out from NICTA, the government-funded research lab, and since then has secured investment from Starfish Ventures and Innovation Capital, opening offices in Sydney, Portland, London and Hong Kong. Audinate is now led by CEO Lee Ellison.

Today, more than 225 manufacturers all over the world, including Dolby, Yamaha, Bose and Shure, embed Audinate’s Dante technology in its flagship products. In 2014, for the second year in a row, Deloitte named Audinate in the top tier of its Technology Fast 50 for Australia and Fast 500 for Asia Pacific.