Today, Audinate is at the heart of the AV – IT convergence with Dante. Audinate’s Dante platform distributes digital audio and video signals over computer networks, and is designed to bring the benefits of IT networking to the professional AV industry.
With a UK office based at the Allia Future Business Centre Cambridge Campus –Audinate are happily bringing audio into the networking world. Founded in 2003 from an interest in music and IT, the team has grown from one person to a company with over 200 employees spread across the world.
We contacted our friend, Holger Wiesenberg, Senior Technical Training Manager EMEA at Audinate to discuss who they are, how they create a positive impact and what they enjoy about being a part of the ‘Allia Community.’
What inspired the business?
The Audinate journey began back in 2003 in Sydney where Co-founder and CEO of Audinate, Aidan Williams’ interest in music combined with an IT background sparked the idea for Dante. His frustration at having to constantly connect his synth to a mixer, to a sound card, MIDI cables – all sorts of different connections inspired him to ask ‘why?’. To him, this seemed like a networking problem – why make all those different connections when you could integrate it into a single network? And so, seeing the potential of bringing audio into the networking world by sending it as IP packets, he and others began what would become Dante. Today more than 600 OEM audio and video manufacturers license Dante technology which is used in over 4000 products worldwide.
What positive impact have you created?
With our offices and our dedicated Dante Mastery Training Courses based in Allia’s Cambridge Campus, we continue to make a significant impact on the AV world. For those who are already very advanced in the AV over IP field, we offer the ‘highest certification level’ with an in person course where people not only learn, but get hands on and interactive. We challenge them with complex topics and let them ‘break things’ and fix them in a controlled environment – so they can take this knowledge and experience out to the real world – and hopefully avoid similar problems in the future! With our attendees ranging from live events engineers, over OEM support technicians, to broadcasters or AV consultants, from AV System integrators and AV specialists from big companies to AV/IT staff at universities, it is one of the most exciting and versatile courses we have.
What is Audinate proud of doing as a company?
We can say with pride that Dante is an award-winning technology – including an Emmy – but the core to the technology has been about interoperability. Interoperability between so many manufacturers and products, across all market sectors and giving the customer a plug and play technology that is flexible and can be easily adapted in all fields of modern AV.
Why did you choose Allia as your team's home?
We like the people, services and spaces provided. So for us, it was a logical move. We also use the conference room
here, as the facilities fit our needs really well.
The Allia team are really nice and helpful – also, Mum’s Café is great.
Allia provides a good service for tenants, from maintenance issues, courses
for first aiders, fire wardens etc including events which are taking place
onsite. The staff are very approachable and accommodating with any queries or
problems we have.”
Holger Wiesenberg, Senior Technical Training Manager EMEA at Audinate
Is there any news/upcoming events you would like the Allia community to know about?
Our next Cambridge Mastery classes are coming up in August, September and October. So If you are Dante Level 1-3 certified and want to do a hands-on, deep dive and troubleshooting course to become a Dante Mastery Technician, feel free to book a seat.
