MNK Studios, designed to support artists and musicians as well as serving production companies and corporate clients at its facilities in the United Arab Emirates, consists of multiple live rooms for rehearsals as well as two recording studios all working on an Audinate Dante audio networking backbone.
“I went with Dante because I wanted to route audio signals for our various requirements seamlessly,” says Miltiadis Kyvernitis, founder and engineer-in-chief of MNK Studios. “Quite frankly, it was the best decision I made for the facility.”
The live rooms primarily serve as rehearsal spaces in addition to being used for podcasts and video shoots, while two rehearsal rooms, Studio M and Studio S, offer sound attenuation of approximately -55 dB. The main live room of the facility, Studio B, serves as a multipurpose room, with stereo and multitrack recording capabilities, ADR for film, music rehearsals, video shoots, and podcasts.
Up to 24 audio channels (expandable) are transmitted bi-directionally between Studio B and both recording studios via a Dante-enabled Avid MTRX with low latency, while audio is also transported to the respective MTRX studio interfaces using Dante Controller and then routed to Avid Pro Tools through DADman control software running on a MacBook Pro. The control rooms employ Dante AVIOs for system audio playback. The ability to route any audio coming from the MacBook allows the studio to record that audio and transmit it without requiring third-party software, and also allows them to route a talkback microphone into other software, such as Zoom.
In Studio B, an Allen & Heath Avantis digital mixer, equipped with two Dante expansion cards for connecting inputs and outputs, is connected to an Allen & Heath DT168 Dante expander and DT164-W preamplifier for session recordings. Using the second Dante card on the Avantis, the studio can multitrack record up to 32 channels from the Avantis to the MacBook Pro, which uses Dante Virtual Soundcard to route the signal to a REAPER digital audio workstation.
“One of the biggest benefits of Dante has been the huge reduction in the number of XLR cables that need to run from the live room to the control room, and the ability to route signals to and from both control rooms provides a good backup in the event one of them is unavailable,” Kyvernitis concludes. “Using Dante has made our workflow efficient and flexible to the needs and requirements of any task that comes our way.”
