ATLANTA – Clay Benning, resident sound designer for the Alliance Theatre at the Woodruff Arts Center, has been using Dante Virtual Soundcard and a Dante-MY16-AUD card for productions on the venue's two stages – the Alliance Stage and the smaller Hertz Stage.
The Dante Virtual Soundcard lets him bypass a FireWire connection, using Ethernet instead. The Alliance's setup includes an Apple Mac Mini running DVS and Figure 53's Qlab v2 software and the Dante-MY 16-AUD in a Yamaha DM100.
Using DVS, Benning is able to rout the audio outputs from Qlab directly to the inputs of the DM1000, with no external audio interface required. Benning uses another copy of DVS on his laptop during production periods to route audio directly from Logic into the sound system.
The Alliance can now send audio over the network digitally instead of over analog cables.
The Dante Virtual Soundcard is a software application that turns PCs or Macs into Dante-enabled devices, allowing uncompressed Dante audio traffic to be transmitted and received using the standard Ethernet port. No additional hardware is required.
"It allows me to use Qlab integrated with the DM1000 and a MY 16 card without anything in between," Benning said, citing reduced cabling, setup time, and overall costs.
"Now I can buy less equipment, with better quality, and save tons of time because I have fewer configuration and driver issues to deal with," Benning added. "This makes doing my job easier, and I get a far superior design process, and therefore, end result."
The Alliance Theatre, now in its 42nd season, shares the Woodruff Arts Center with the High Museum of Art, Young Audiences, 14th Street Playhouse and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The theatre won the 2007 Regional Theatre Tony Award.
For more information, please visit www.audinate.com.
