Audinate Dante Network Control

Controls an Audinate Dante audio network over the native UDP control protocol — the same discovery and routing mechanism Dante Controller uses. Nothing from Audinate has to be installed on the Fantago machine, and no Dante Domain Manager licence is involved.

One device entry is the whole network. This handler does not work the way the others do. Dante routing is a network-wide operation: a subscription names a transmitter by device and channel name and is written into the receiver, so there is no single box to point at. Fantago discovers every reachable Dante device over mDNS and addresses all of them through one entry. Add one device called DANTE and you have the entire segment — a console, four stage boxes and a pair of amplifiers included.

What it can do: make and clear crosspoints from dropdowns of the discovered channels or by name; route stereo pairs in one action; drive an X-Y panel (press a destination to arm it, press a source to route it there); clear every crosspoint on one device or on the whole network behind a two-press safety; rename devices and channels; set latency, sample rate, encoding, sample-rate pull-up and analogue output level; and flash a device's identify light. Feedback variables report what each receive channel is actually fed from and whether the subscription is healthy, read back from the device rather than assumed from the command sent — so a button lights when the route is genuinely established, not when it was merely requested.

The IP address on the device row is the Fantago machine's own address on the Dante VLAN. It is not the address of a Dante device, and getting this wrong is the single most common setup mistake.

The reason is that Dante discovery is multicast. Fantago has to join multicast groups and send mDNS queries, and on a machine with more than one network card the operating system will not reliably guess which card those should go out of. A control room PC very often has exactly that arrangement: one card on the office or production LAN, a second card on a dedicated, isolated audio VLAN. The address you enter is what pins discovery and multicast to the right card. Enter the audio-side address and Fantago looks for Dante devices on the audio network; enter the office-side address and it will look on the office network and find nothing.

If the machine has only one card, that card's address is simply the one to use. There is also an optional Interface IP field in the handler configuration for the unusual case where the interface to bind to needs to be stated separately from the device row.

The network segment matters as much as the address. Discovery and change notifications are multicast, and multicast is not routed between subnets by default. The Fantago machine must sit on the same layer-2 segment as the Dante devices. A VPN, a routed link between two buildings or a switch with IGMP snooping misconfigured will all produce the same symptom: the sync completes and reports zero devices. Nothing is wrong with the handler at that point — the discovery packets are not reaching it.

One consequence worth knowing in advance: because Fantago speaks Dante's own protocol on the audio VLAN, it needs a foot in that network. If your Dante VLAN is deliberately isolated, plan for the second network card rather than trying to route to it.

Dante announces changes on two multicast groups: 224.0.0.231:8702 carries "something just changed" notifications, and 224.0.0.233:8708 carries the presence beacons devices emit continuously. Fantago listens on both so that a crosspoint made from Dante Controller, from a console's front panel or from a device's own web page shows up in Fantago without anyone pressing sync.

Those two ports can only be held by one application at a time on a given machine. Dante Controller and Dante Virtual Soundcard hold them. So if either is running on the same computer as Fantago, Fantago cannot bind them.

What actually happens then: nothing breaks and no error interrupts you. All routing and configuration continue to work in full — those go out over the ARC service on each device's own port, which is not contended. What is lost is only the live half of the picture: state changes made elsewhere no longer appear by themselves. Press Discover & Sync, or use the Refresh State action on a button or a schedule, and everything is current again. The handler falls back to an ephemeral socket automatically and writes a line in the log explaining that it did; you do not have to configure anything.

Port 5353 (mDNS) is handled the same way. If another service on the machine already holds it — a printer discovery agent, Bonjour, Avahi — discovery switches to asking for direct replies on a private port instead, and keeps working.

The practical advice: on a dedicated Fantago machine, leave Dante Controller off and enjoy live state. On an engineer's laptop that also runs Dante Controller, expect sync-on-demand and put a Refresh State button on the panel. Both are perfectly usable; only one of them updates by itself.

• Dante Device Lock makes a device reject every write. Routing simply does nothing and the reason is logged. Unlock the device in Dante Controller first.
• A console may own its own patch. Some mixing consoles manage the Dante patch from their own DANTE SETUP page and will overwrite changes made from outside. If routes revert seconds after you make them, that is what is happening — set the console to accept external patching.
• Stereo pairs are detected by adjacency (1+2, 3+4), because that is the only rule that holds at both ends: sources usually carry L/R in their names, destinations often do not. Where L/R markers exist they confirm the pairing and label it, and a pair whose names read R then L is left out rather than routed with its legs crossed. The detected pairs are listed in Handler Configuration so you can check them against your naming before relying on them.
• Clear All is armed by a first press and carried out by a second one within five seconds, so a wiped network is never one accidental touch away. The arming lapses on its own, and it can be set to fire in a single press where that is what you want.

Every action can also be triggered from outside Fantago, which is how you drive Dante routing from a playout automation system, a GPI box or another controller. Examples assume the Fantago device is named DANTE.

Via HTTP GET:

http://<FantaGo_IP>:<HTTP_PORT>/sendTo/DANTE?cmd=sync

http://<FantaGo_IP>:<HTTP_PORT>/sendTo/DANTE?cmd=subscribe_manual&rx_device=Amp-01&rx_channel=1&tx_device=Console&tx_channel=Main+L

http://<FantaGo_IP>:<HTTP_PORT>/sendTo/DANTE?cmd=unsubscribe_manual&rx_device=Amp-01&rx_channel=1

http://<FantaGo_IP>:<HTTP_PORT>/sendTo/DANTE?cmd=clear_all&scope=*&confirm=now

http://<FantaGo_IP>:<HTTP_PORT>/sendTo/DANTE?cmd=set_latency&dante_device=Amp-01&latency=2

Via TCP/UDP Listener:

DANTE:subscribe_manual:rx_device=Amp-01,rx_channel=1,tx_device=Console,tx_channel=Main L

DANTE:unsubscribe_manual:rx_device=Amp-01,rx_channel=1

A subscription quotes the transmitter by name, so the source channel name must match exactly what the source device advertises — the label shown in the Transmit channel dropdown is already the correct one.

The Dante control protocol is not published by Audinate, so this handler speaks what has been observed on the wire. It has been verified against real hardware, but Dante covers a very wide range of equipment and firmware: check it against your own devices before relying on it on air.

Dante, Audinate, Dante Controller and Dante Virtual Soundcard are trademarks of Audinate Pty Ltd, used here only to identify the equipment this handler communicates with. Fantago is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by Audinate.