MOTUnation.com

BTW there is a certification program that involves a very advanced lab at University of New Hampshire in Hanover NH:

http://www.avnu.org/certification

http://www.avnu.org/certification/recog ... t_facility

One of the great things about industry open standards is that they tend to lead to such certification programs, so that companies strive ever harder to reach compliance and play well with others. Of course, everyone wants that "Certified by AVnu" sticker on their product!

Easier said than done BTW.

Out of fairness, here's a useful link that gives the low-down on Dante:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking)

I think the main thing to be aware of is that it is more limited in scope than AVB, which can be both good and bad "depending". Easier to meet the standard, and in some applications a very good choice, but not making an attempt to be fully generalized (e.g. car audio) like AVB. As indicated in the Wiki article, it is meant more as a modern replacement for the pretty awful CobraNet and EtherSound standards (although those were "better than nothing" while they were the only game in town, and the latter is weak mostly in its limited topology which prevents point-to-point connections which are so important today).

Until reading that page though, I didn't realize that Audionate now has an office in Portland OR, not too far from AVnu Alliance's Beaverton OR office. Like I said, these two standards aren't meant to compete with each other, and have some overlap as well as Dante being focused enough to have been able to deliver its promise rather quickly (at least in general; it's not for me to say whether all the details are done, performance metrics, etc.).

I haven't delved into Dante deep enough to see whether it's a fairly easy swap in existing systems that run CobraNet or EtherSound.

Although Dante itself isn't an open standard per se, it of course layers atop stuff that is. In looking at the vendors and products that are using Dante (including those of Symetrix), I'm guessing its recent adoption has been most strongly felt in the world of broadcasting as well as theatrical productions and other fixed systems.

...also concert audio - give me Lake processing with a Dante networked audio system and I'd be a happy boy
Interesting that Audinate announced Dante Via a fairly long time before availability. It remains to be seen what the software requirements are and, therefore, what the PC requirements are, but it's promising that USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt and analogue devices can all be networked. Fortunately I won't be acquiring any more hardware this year so I'll have time to see what's what. It'd be more than a little good if I could acquire 1 x 16A for my next Mac and continue to use my Motu and Apogee hardware with my current Mac via Dante Via. I have a suspicion 'tho that OS will need to be a lot more recent and will exclude my Mac Pro 1.1

In terms of having a direct Ethernet connection between an AVB interface and a Mac (e.g., instead of Thunderbolt), it seems that it would be possible since Apple supports it, but there's a lot of driver software to be written, from scratch, so it could be a long time if ever.

TinenTech, send me a PM as I'm hesitant to answer your questions directly until I have time to ask some co-workers what is public and what isn't.

As I suspected Dante Via will not support OSX prior to 10.9 so that's officially the end of my Mac Pro 1.1
New plan based on current information:
I'll be purchasing a top spec Macbook Pro to use as a live keyboard rig with my S80, Komplete 10 Ultimate and the 61 note NI keyboard.
I'll use a Thunderbolt to Ethernet cable with the laptop in the studio and build a Dante Via network using the Motu AVB switch, the next release iMac and some Mac Minis for various sample libraries and other VIs. A few Thunderbolt to Firewire cables will allow my 828Mk2, Apogee Rosetta and DA16X, dbx Quantum and Midas F32 console plus all software ins and outs to appear on the Dante network. I probably get one of the 16A Motu Thunderbolt interfaces. Dante Via will handle latency on the network and it will be balanced across all ethernet connections to the switch. It shouldn't take much to calculate any discrepancies and compensate for them