#105 - Audinate AVIO Dante Audio Adapter: First Look & Review

[Music] hey thanks come back to the channel we've been talking a lot about Dante interfaces and networks and recent videos and you can check out the sound devices mv4 dante interface video i did the sound devices 974 quarter video recently or my reaper da video where I used Dante virtual soundcard to pull audio from Yamaha reo system while Dante makes a great snake solution for systems like Yamahas mixing consoles when you go beyond the stage box of the console you can get into some really powerful territory more and more Dante and they beers showing up all the time giving us options to add things like wireless microphones and speakers to our network for direct access but what about all the gear you already own to that end we have Auto Nate's first foray into Dante adapters and that is the obvio series and you've probably heard about these already they've been out for a little while now while they offer other dante adapters in the card form for mixers and also as a module that can be integrated into products the Avio is a standalone solution and their first one now obviously this adapter is not passive it does contain some circuitry namely the Dante ultimate chipset which I believe audinate is using in this to handle all the Dante secret sauce and licensing it has all that baked in and now of course that needs power and in these units the power is supplied by way of p OE or power over ethernet now it's not a big deal if you've already spent a bunch of money on dante compliant network gear and your switch does not provide p OE you can add that with either p OE injector after your switch or by adding a p OE switch like I have here small one just to power these now that sorted you've got a few different flavors of these to choose from one channel and - there's XLR female that allows you to get audio on to the network and XLR male which allows getting audio off of the network once connected to the network you'll see the units populate in the Dante controller and they can be routed as you need just like any other Dante device it really is that simple the ability to network your current gear can have some really interesting results for corporate jobs with multiple rooms you may want to network powered speakers to be utilized in multiple setups as the rooms are turned over and things like air walls down you can end up having a much more flexible system when your speakers and mixing consoles and various equipment from those different breakout rooms all become one again or vice versa setting up things like press risers with a network moult can be a game-changer as far as being able to route exactly what you need to route to each riser or D even different people on a riser depending on how far you go with this but it can be a very very powerful thing to have your press bolt wired up to your Dante network and be able to feed it that way as issues arise and things change on the fly with video and media playback in mind the a/v online includes this USB adapter as well the DVS or Dante virtual soundcard is a fantastic piece of technology that I absolutely use on my machine and you probably already do too on yours but when a client's machine or a rental machine have audio that you need to manage having a box you can plug in directly without having to deal with drivers or licensing to set up is a huge time saver adding sub mixers breakout room systems own speakers or most any other input or output you might need to get onto or off of the network is as easy as just plugging it in it should be noted that these are intended for line level inputs so you'll need to switch your wireless gear to line level output or use a standalone mic pre or mixer to connect a microphone to the network with the a bo adaptors so in practice the avio adapters work exactly as you'd expect I've had absolutely no issues with them they're built pretty darn well for what they are and that's really the only place that I have any criticism and that is just the fact that they're plastic and although they're really built well I just wonder how long this would survive in regular use you know they are very handy in the fact that they're small lightweight that like if you're hooking this up to a powered speaker you can connect it up easily and let this dangle so I appreciate this design what I don't love is the cheaper these are by Neutrik but these are they're cheaper yunxiang version of their connectors not the real genuine deal this cable seems to hold up fine so far as do these molded ends and you can see here the way that system works they are two individual cables it's just a nice piece of molded plastic there that provides the strain relief they're just fun as my good friend told me if you give solutions to criticism engineers will respect the attention and with that in mind I don't want to just criticize the housing and the way these are built I wanted to give an idea of what I would love to see in addition to these I think this is a great design but in a lot of instances this would work perfectly they're lightweight through easy to travel with but I'd love to see a pro model or something a little beefier so I came up with this and this is an eye view adapter built into an old PC di box I had laying around and it gives us output a and B and it also gives us a ground lift on a my ground lift for B is the switch has gone bad unfortunately as part of what was wrong with this box and I don't have another horizon one on hand but gives us a ground lift on a gives us a some tamaño that will some both outputs that's probably not something you'd ever really want on this but it was there so I reused it and then a pad which can be handy you know if you're putting this out somewhere and you just need to have a local pad there you go so a little beefier idea metal box that was a hell of a job to cut but yeah just just as a laughs they were nice enough to send over a prototype version of the a vo adapter for us to take a look at so you can see up close here a little bit about the board that's inside you know there are $120 a piece right now and I've heard some offhand remarks from folks like oh there's not much in there you know why do they cost so much and you can see here it's absolutely packed front to back on this board with circuitry not only to deal with the Ethernet connection with the Dante stuff but also circuitry there to protect from plugging into things like phantom power supplies and just general stuff you'd need there to get a balanced line level signal out of this system without having to worry about plugging it into other things like mixers and things that may have phantom power I hope the folks at Auto Nate don't mind that I did this this is just as a laugh but again just to show that like you know I don't want to criticize somebody else's work without putting in a little bit of effort to show what I'm thinking so I'd love to see something like this in the future I don't know if anybody else would prefer a rugged box you know these options for switches are completely arbitrary you could you know I'd love to hear what you would want those to do this is just what I had on hand and decided to make it up in something that might be useful but yeah just a bit of fun there anyway I really hope they don't mind if you do I'm sorry I put it back together I did definitely destroy the case though so [Music] [Music] you but that's it for the obviou dabbers i hope this was an interesting first look I'd love to hear any questions you have or comments or experiences I know some folks out there using these already so let me know down below what your experience has been with them so far if it's been as seamless as it has been for me testing them frankly I plugged them in they work there's anything you specifically want me to test let me know for sure and I'll be happy to do a follow-up with that or pass the question along directly to audinate if it's something beyond my knowledge so please hit the comments down below and don't forget to Like and subscribe thanks to everybody who supports the channel and hit the website check it out I change it as much as possible pretty much daily now industry news job listings anything else I come across I try to share as often as possible thanks for watching I'll see you soon [Music] you [Music]

Channel: DcSoundOp

Views: 30,652

Keywords: Sound, Audio, DcSoundOp, Mixing, Engineer, dante, audinate, networked audio, audinate avio dante adapter, dante adapter, AVIO, yamaha rio dante, yamaha rio, dante networked audio, networked digital audio, livesound, audio engineering, diy electronics, digital audio snake, soundguy, soundgirl, electronics, pa system, prosoundweb, proaudio, pro audio, audio mixing, live sound basics, audio fundamentals, audio over cat5

Id: m9uRFbYUJ0w

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 29 2018