Dante Fundamentals
Dante carries many channels of digital audio over a standard IP Ethernet network, which lets a single Cat cable replace whole bundles of analogue copper. It runs perfectly well on ordinary gigabit switches, but it depends on two things being right: a shared, precise clock, and consistent network performance. The audio is broken into tiny, regularly timed packets, usually at a 48 kHz sample rate, or 96 kHz for higher-resolution work.
The latency is where Dante shows its cleverness. It is selectable and small, typically configured somewhere between 0.25 and 5 milliseconds depending on the size of the network and how many switches the audio passes through. More hops and a larger network call for a higher setting to stay safe, while a tight local rig can run very low. The important part is that this latency budget is fixed and deterministic — you know exactly how much delay you have — and that predictability is what makes a packet network usable for live audio in the first place.
The trade-off for all this capability is that Dante is a real network, not a magic box you plug in and forget. Congestion, a misconfigured switch, an IGMP problem, or a clocking fault will all surface as dropouts and clicks. Set it up deliberately — a managed switch, the correct clock, a sensible latency setting — and it is genuinely rock solid; treat it as plug-and-play and it will let you down at the worst possible moment.
A bad network breaks perfect audio.