Kudos: Game-changing way of distributing audio; simplified setup and installation
Concerns: DSM Web-control interface is basic
A few years ago, I went to a manufacturer’s booth at CEDIA Expo, and they mentioned that their new in-ceiling speakers ran on PoE++. Having never heard of the ++ standard, I thought he was making a joke, and responded, “Why not PoE plus, plus, plus?” (If you’ve seen the Sasha Baron Cohen “Ali G” interview with “my man, Mr. Boutros, Boutros, Boutros Ghali,” that was kind of my take on it.) Sadly, my joke fell flat.
I had a similar experience at another booth where a manufacturer said, “So, you’re familiar with Dante…” It was technically a question, but he asked it in a rhetorical way, like, “So, you know we’re at CEDIA…?”
Except, I wasn’t familiar with Dante at all. My CI firm does almost zero commercial work outside the occasional TV hang in the office of an existing residential customer, so I’d had no occasion to run across Dante, which is an acronym for Digital Audio Network Through Ethernet.
This proclaimed “gold standard of networked audio” technology was launched by Sydney, Australia-based Audinate back in 2006 to send uncompressed digital audio signals over standard Ethernet networks using regular Category-rated wiring. And due to its ability to support up to 512 channels that can be transmitted over relatively long distances or to multiple locations, having virtually zero delay, using existing IT infrastructure, and using lossless digital signal transmission, it has become a popular solution in the commercial and professional audio world.
Of course, we’ve started seeing some Audio over IP crossover into the resi world recently. One of the first big demonstrations was at CEDIA Expo 2023, where StormAudio demonstrated an 11.6.6-channel fully digital, AES67 Audio-over-IP theater system. This allowed the Storm Evo 32-channel processor to be wired with just four cables: power, two Cat6, and HDMI. (While AES67 is a technical standard, it allows streaming interoperability between the various IP-based audio networking products currently available, such as Dante.)
Cut to CEDIA Expo 2024, and Dante was a topic of conversation at many booths. The benefits go beyond greatly simplifying and decluttering the rack, as the network topology also eliminates common issues like ground-loop hums and allows CI-friendly features such as remote setup, calibration, and monitoring. The Dante ecosystem is also huge, offering wide compatibility between more than 5000 Dante-enabled products from over 600 manufacturers.
At SoundTube’s booth, they were pitching Dante to the resi market in a big way, using the theme, “Dante Comes Home.” It was there that Ken Hecht, SoundTube’s vice president and head of engineering and R&D, walked me through the company’s complete residential ecosystem of Dante-enabled products, which includes the STNet Switch II, a variety of Dante PoE-powered speakers, Dante enabled power amplifiers, and the new DSM-16 Dante System Manager, which the company is calling “the linchpin to its STNet Dante ecosystem.”
Will the DSM-16 be enough to help Dante break into the residential market? SoundTube sent me a full system to find out.
First Impressions
At first glance, the components don’t really seem too different from systems you’re likely already installing. The STNet Switch II is your typical, high-quality, managed PoE+ switch, offering 16 ports with full PoE+ on all ports (700 total watts), as well as two SFP expansion ports. Honestly, at a retail price under $1300, this switch is worth considering even if you never use it for Dante audio. The IPD-CI62 speakers are solidly constructed with a fully sealed metal backbox enclosure and a unique “SpeedWing” mounting arm system. Except, as you look a little closer, you notice there aren’t any binding posts for connecting speaker wiring; rather, there is an Ethernet connection. Finally, the DSM-16, which initially looks like your typical audio matrix, offers six pairs of RCA analog inputs, four sets of Phoenix connectors for balanced audio connections, and two each coaxial and Toslink optical audio inputs. It also has four configurable GPIO (General-Purpose Input-Output) ports for logic I/O and remote volume control, as well as 12-volt triggers. But closer inspection reveals it has two separate Ethernet connections — one Dante/PoE+ and another for network — and only two sets of analog audio outputs rather than the typical eight.
Hecht was kind enough to fly up and spend the day with me to get the system configured and up and running, and as we were discussing different applications for the system, it was easy to see how this system could certainly alter the way we deploy audio systems.
First, think of how many different spools of wire you likely keep in stock and load into a van for a prewire: probably multiple spools of 2- and 4-conductor wire from 12 to 18 gauge. Now, imagine your inventory and prewire if you only needed to pull Cat6.
No more needing to calculate impedance and signal loss over a wire run. No more lugging those heavy spools into job sites. No more running out of that one wire you don’t use very often. Just keeping a full inventory of Cat6 wire that not only handles all your networking — and likely surveillance — needs, but also all the audio chores as well. That alone is kind of a game-changer for the Dante infrastructure in the CI world.
Beyond that, you’ll eliminate the interconnect cabling between matrix and amplifiers, which will simplify connections and declutter the rack. You’ll also eliminate any heat issues from having an “amp farm” in the rack. The Dante network topology eliminates issues like ground-loop hums and allows features like remote setup, calibration, and monitoring (currently requiring a VPN or other remote-access option). And reconfiguring is often done entirely in software, not requiring any rewiring.
SoundTube offers a large variety of Dante-enabled PoE-powered speakers in architectural recessed, surface mount, pendant, outdoor, and even soundbar styles. While I didn’t test them, one interesting speaker series offered by SoundTube is its IPD4. This speaker takes a single PoE+ Cat cable and then has internal amplification to power three additional speakers. Plus, it can break out the second pair of connected speakers into a separate zone, giving you the ability to stream a different source at a different volume to that pair. At $675 for the main speaker and $252 for each passive speaker, this would allow you to add two zones of audio to a system for under $1500.
If the client has a pair of traditional, non-powered speakers they want to incorporate, you could add one of SoundTube’s new Dante-enabled amplifiers. There is the MCA7004t that has up to 700 watts x 4, or the beastly MCA10004t that goes up to 1000 watts x 4. And because Dante components are all interoperable, you aren’t limited to staying in the SoundTube sandbox, but rather can choose any certified Dante product, or interface with those that support AES67, like the StormAudio processor.
Setup
When I’m reviewing a new whole-house audio system, typically I pull out my existing in-ceiling speakers and install the new ones, and then replace my Control4/Triad electronics with the system I’m testing. However, that only works when the speakers use traditional speaker wiring, not Ethernet.
So, things were a little different for this install. SoundTube sent three pairs of speakers to test, along with a pile of Ethernet cables, allowing me to simulate a multi-zone setup. They also sent some brackets/stands that allowed the speakers to be installed and sit on the floor at an upfiring angle. Because the IPD-CI62 speakers are housed in a sealed metal backbox, they don’t require being installed in a ceiling to sound their best.
The IPD-CI62 is a 6.5-inch coaxial design with a polypropylene woofer with butyl rubber surround and a 1-inch silk dome tweeter, along with a tuned port for enhanced bass response with stated 54 Hz–20 kHz (±3 dB) performance. The speakers are bi-amped with crossovers, EQ, and time correction performed in the digital domain prior to amplification.
The installer side of me really appreciated the unique “SpeedWing” mounting system. This is two metal “clamping” arms that are adaptable to thicknesses ranging from .035 to 2.5 inches, meaning you’ll likely never encounter a ceiling they can’t mount in. Also, it only has two screws to deal with, and the wide clamps make for a solid and snug fit against the ceiling.
Worth mentioning is the excellent speaker configurator tool available on SoundTube’s website. This allows you to enter in the size of the space you’re wanting to cover with sound, the desired volume level at the listener position, and the coverage quality, and it will calculate the speaker’s performance and distribution and tell you how many speakers are needed to cover that area. It would be a great report to include with your proposals.
You connect your “traditional” analog or digital sources directly to the DSM-16, which then “Dante-izes” them and sends them out over the network. I connected my Marantz CD 50n (review available online), which has a digital preamp, CD player, and HEOS built-in, along with my DISH Joey. To test Dante sources, I installed the Dante Virtual Soundcard on my PC and SoundTube sent a Dante AVIO analog input adapter. Because there are no physical connections to the DSM with Dante sources, those bindings are all made in software.
There is a host of modules that allow you to connect different sources to a Dante network. For example, Radio Design Labs offers decora-sized devices for connecting analog line-level, balanced XLR, digital, or even Bluetooth devices. Muxlab has a module that allows connecting HDMI sources. And Lode Audio offers the La Dante, which is a four-stream native Dante audio streamer. Due to the decentralized nature of Dante, as long as the sources connect back to the network, they can be available as sources to any zone on the system.
Configuring the system requires different steps using Dante Controller software, SoundTube’s STNet Control Center software, and the Web browser built into the DSM-16. These are a bit interconnected, and you often need to go back and forth between them to complete the initial setup. If the project requires any special network configurations, those will be made in the STNet Switch II itself; however, it is set up and ready to go out of the box for Dante streaming.
While the configuration isn’t difficult per se, it was just different enough that I got hung up on getting the Dante connections and bindings figured out and needed to reach out to Hecht. He said SoundTube offers both virtual and in-person training to help learn the configuration, and the company will also have a host of guided videos available on its website to help bring dealers up to speed.
Within Dante Controller, you make bindings between any Dante transmitters (sources) and Dante receivers, which in this case would be the IPD-CI62 speakers. The STNet Control Center gives you deep access into each of the speakers, allowing you to adjust input and output gain, set high- and low-frequency bypass, configure up to eight different PEQ settings, output pink noise, and monitor the speaker’s health and status. One of the benefits of using SoundTube’s STNet Switch II is that you can use its higher wattage output of 40 watts to drive the speakers, and this is enabled in the Control Center software. (While the speakers are compatible with PoE++, they won’t receive any more than the standard 30 watts of PoE+ power.)
Configuring the DSM-16 is more like setting up a traditional audio matrix with a couple of twists. After logging into the Installer Page, you have five configuration options: Zone, Input, User, Output, and Logic.
The Zone Config lets you create zone names (kitchen, dining, bedroom, etc.), lets you assign a password to each zone if desired, and then lets you choose whether to show or hide the meters and EQ settings.
The Inputs tab is where inputs are created, assigned, and connected to the zones created in the step above. You use dropdowns to select where the source is connected — either analog or digital to the DSM-16, or as a Dante transmitter — then you “link” them to each zone. If you don’t want a source to be available in a particular zone, just don’t link it. Depending on how many sources you have and how many zones you are linking them to, things can get visually crowded on this page with all the linking connections. For example, if you had a CD player that was available to all zones, both of its analog outputs would each have eight separate connections. Multiply that by potentially eight or more different sources, and things can get a bit messy. Hecht said they will be rolling out a firmware update that will make it easier to see these connections. You also have adjustments for input gain, delay, ducking, crossover, EQ, volume, and limiter settings.
The User Config page is where you link the input sources created above to each audio source. Again, this is performed on a zone-by-zone basis, so if you wanted to exclude something from the user GUI in a specific zone, you would just exclude it here.
The Output page is where you would link what outputs are routed to the two pairs of analog audio outputs. This could either be one of the inputs or could be linked to a specific zone in case you were using a separate powered subwoofer. The Logic page lets you configure the four GPIO logic inputs, which can either be linked to Logic In, Logic Out, or Analog In.
SoundTube offers integration drivers for interfacing with control systems like Control4, Crestron, and QSC. I added the Control4 driver to my project, and integration and configuration were straightforward, taking about ten minutes to set up and interface with my system.
One issue we had right out of the gate was that connecting the STNet Switch immediately crashed my network. We’d reboot, try again, and crash. After some head scratching, we discovered the STNet Switch ships with a default static network IP of 192.168.1.1, which also happens to be a very common gateway for many residential networks, including my own. We created a VLAN in the switch to resolve this, segregating the Dante devices and traffic to one side and my home’s Wi-Fi and network to the other. This shows the smarts of having two Ethernet connections in the DSM-16; having one for network traffic and another for the Dante/PoE+. But if you are working on a .1.1 network, you’ll want to reconfigure the STNET Switch prior to connecting.
Performance
Assuming you don’t have a separate control system, controlling the DSM — selecting what is playing in each zone as well as adjusting volume levels — is done by logging into its web browser. When you hit the DSM’s browser, you’re presented with different log-in options via a dropdown list that includes Installer (for making the configuration settings mentioned above), Admin, and ones for each zone you created.
If you log in as Admin, you can select the source and control the volume in each zone on a single screen. If you are using a PC or tablet to do this, that probably won’t be an issue, but on my iPhone, this Admin GUI is a bit hard to see, and kind of clumsy to select and make changes with its small buttons and sliders. If you log into an individual Zone, it is much easier to control on a phone’s smaller screen real estate. Also, if you choose not to password-protect the individual audio zones in the initial setup, selecting that zone will take you straight to it. However, you need to go back to the DSM’s main page before you can select and control a different zone, which is a little clunky.
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I found the control experience significantly improved by adding the DSM to my Control4 project. Once in Control4, I could pick the room and source like I would with any other system, then have full control of that source device as well, such as the HEOS streaming in my Marantz. I could also add the other rooms into an audio session and quickly adjust the volume in each of the areas. This provided a much more complete experience, and my recommendation would be to layer a control system on top of the DSM-16 if possible.
With either control means, I found the DSM to be quick and responsive to input flips and volume changes.
One of Dante’s strengths is its virtually non-existent delay, and I definitely found that to be the case between the three sets of speakers. Having them all in the same room, it would have been very apparent if any were even the slightest bit off, and I certainly never noticed it. Even more impressive, there were no perceptible lip-sync issues even when watching TV from my DISH Joey. Voices lined up among the three speakers with no loss or timing issues. And the Dante AVIO allowed me to easily add an analog source streamed across the network without issues.
With a rated low-end performance of 54 Hz, the speakers don’t plumb the deepest registers of the frequency range, but they play low enough to deliver full-range sound. They are definitely able to give the double bass line in Miles Davis’ “So What” the right weight, but not able to get to the bottom of Hans Zimmer’s “Beginnings Are Such Delicate Times.” However, with all six of the speakers playing together — not too unusual to have in a large room/space — the overall bass output was definitely augmented. The highs from the 1-inch silk-dome are clear and detailed, and presented vocals and cymbal strikes and brush strokes clearly, while not being brash or harsh.
What I most appreciated was the width and spaciousness of the sound, with audio that played well outside the physical boundaries of the speakers. The swirling opening notes from the Dune 2 soundtrack gently swayed between the two speakers and well outside to the left and right sides of my room. This wide dispersion would certainly make them great for multi-room audio playback. Also, with a rated maximum SPL of 101 dB, they have plenty of headroom to fill an audio space with party-level volumes.
I did have a couple of minor operational hiccups. One, I initially got so much static from the Dante Virtual Soundcard as to make it unusable. Whether it was an issue with DVS or my PC is hard to say, as others have reported similar problems, but after some computer reboots DVS mostly played correctly with just a bit of background crackles. (The AVIO didn’t have any of those issues.) Also, following a several-hour-long power outage at my home, the system came back but dropped a key setting that kept audio from streaming and lost connection with my Control4 system. Fortunately, these issues were both quickly and easily resolved.
SoundTube’s STNet system definitely demonstrates that Dante can successfully transition from commercial to residential, and the DSM-16 brings a lot of simplification and improvements with it. The ability to get rid of amp farms, wire a system end-to-end with Cat cable, and push the intelligence and control all the way out to the speakers is certainly appealing. And in the Resi space, it seems that Dante is more a case of when, not if. With SoundTube, that when is now.
855-663-5600; SOUNDTUBE.COM
Product Specs:
- Dante System Manager with 16×16 audio matrix supporting up to 16 mono or 8 stereo zones serves as the heart of the Dante network audio system
- Delivers up to 24-bit/96 kHz uncompressed audio
- Dante setup and configuration via Dante Controller software
- Control and setup via built-in web browser or third-party control drivers for Control4, Crestron, and QSC, and API that can be used with any control system
- Compatible with 600-plus manufacturers and 5000 Dante devices
- Inputs: 12 RCA line-level, 8 balanced analog audio, 2 coaxial digital, 2 coaxial audio, 4 GPIO logic inputs, 12v trigger, RJ45 Ethernet, RJ45 Dante/PoE+; Outputs: 4 RCA line-level, 2 balanced analog audio, 2 12v triggers, 24v power
Dimensions: 17.25 x 1.75 x 9.25 inches (WxHxD); Weight: 7.15 pounds
