Audinate has released the latest firmware update for the Dante PCIe sound card, version 3.7.1, which provides a range of new features, including audio signal presence indicators, latency statistics monitoring and packet error detection.
In addition, the Dante PCIe sound card may now be used with several popular Thunderbolt expansion chassis to enable connection to computers such as Apple Mac Pro, MacBook Pro and Mac mini.
It’s been certified to run with Apple’s latest version Mac OS 10.10, and will now also run on Microsoft Windows servers. Both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Window Server 2012 R2 are supported.
Thunderbolt expansion chassis support has been successfully validated against the following:
& Sonnet Technologies’ entire family of Echo Express and rack mount expansion chassis
& Magma ExpressBox 1T 1-slot Thunderbolt to PCIe expansion chassis
& Other World Computing (OWC) Mercury Helios PCIe Thunderbolt expansion chassis
The Dante PCIe sound card supports up to 128 channels of bi-directional audio with very low latency. “Professionals migrating to Thunderbolt based workstations and workflows will now be able to utilize Dante PCIe sound cards,” says Tim Miller, president of Magma. “Magma’s ExpressBox 1T offers a compact and portable solution for housing the Dante PCIe sound card while offering Thunderbolt 2 speed.”
“Our customers have been anxiously waiting for the very popular Dante PCIe sound card to become certified as compatible with our line of Echo Express Thunderbolt expansion chassis as well as xMac Mini and Pro Servers,” adds Greg LaPorte, vice president of sales and marketing, Sonnet Technologies.
The Dante PCIe sound card has been enhanced to support the advanced Dante Controller feature set to monitor the status of the audio network, allowing it to remotely detect audio signal presence on computers running the Dante PCIe sound card, which can also report latency statistics and packet errors to the Dante Controller.
