Dale B posted a question on my classifieds thread, which is better answered here, about moving to using Dante kit.

I built an SAC rig using Motu 424 card and 2408 interfaces. I used the appsys extenders to let me stick the ada8000s on the stage and keep the host at foh, which allowed additional IO on the analogue from the 2408.

A lot has changed, not least my employment, and live sound is now only an occasional part of my life... back to being a hobby really. As a result I had a greater need for a smaller mixer I could take out for little jobs. I also wanted to get rid of the ada8000 and toslink connectors from my life. I opted for a rack mixer with dante card option and ended up with the Presonus RM series as these seemed to be the best value for my needs.

So I now have an RM32ai and an RM16ai, both with dante cards. By default every input channel goes straight to a dante transmitter channel. I've configured snapshots routing the incoming dante audio to the outputs. So I can easily switch between using an RM as a mixer or a dante stagebox.

At the PC end I have a focusrite rednet card. This provides me with up to 128 channels in and out to the Dante network at low latency. It's just an asio driver so works like any other audio interface. I use all basic unmanaged gigabit switches as there's no need for qos on such a small system. There's a wifi router that provides DHCP to the network and connects my tablet. All the audio devices are using a static IP address.

At foh I can either use one of the RMs as a stagebox for monitoring and playback input. When I do something really big, about once a year now, and I need both stageboxes out I use Dante Via to give me analogue i/o from a laptop at foh.

This setup is extremely flexible and more than meets my needs. The cabling setup is easy and the networking piece is simple. The only slightly inelegant aspect is having to use the Presonus UC app to adjust preamp gain and phantom power. This is no different to the ADA8000s though and is at least remotely accessible.

Things I've learned are...
  • Use static IP for everything that matters. This isn't necessary but it helps with management. I have a DHCP server in the router, but this is only for additional clients not the audio devices.
  • Use real switches. By this I mean a gigabit network switch that's nothing else. If you can go for good quality managed switches than great. You don't need to. A basic netgear is fine. Beware the ports on a wifi router. These are often cheap, poor quality devices designed for domestic use. They are often not a straight forward switch and each interface might send traffic via the built in firewall or CPU. The end result is even though there's a gigabit port on the back of a wifi router you might have very poor or unreliable network throughput. I've encountered glitching that I traced to this.
  • Dante is awesome