Havana-based audio rental and production company OKeventos is using value Audinate’s Dante Audio-over-IP networking for projects ranging from live multitrack recording to television production.
‘We mainly provide services for live concerts, but also support corporate, theater, dance and sporting events across Cuba,’ says cmpany owner and President, Mauricio Blanco. ‘As a live sound engineer, digitisation brings comfort with reduced set-up times, simpler and more secure connections, lower noise levels, low latency and higher capacity. I underwent an exhaustive study of all digital audio networking solutions, and in my estimation no one beats Dante.’
The recently released Live in Cuba album by Wynton Marsalis (Blue Engine Records) made Blanco the first sound engineer to use Dante in Cuba. When it was recorded in 2010, Blanco sought a simple way to multitrack both the recording and a live TV broadcast with the digital audio networking solutions available at the time – including CobraNet. He found that Dante would further streamline the installation process, using single-wire connections to move 40 channels of audio between his Yamaha M7CL console (fitted with Dante MYAUD16 modules) and an off-the-shelf switch.
From there, the team used Dante Controller software to enable signal flow to Cubase DAW software for live multitracking – again, for both recording and TV broadcast.
In the years following the Live in Cuba project, OKeventos has extended its Dante architecture by adding two Yamaha CL consoles, Yamaha RIO stageboxes, and an Allen and Heath iLive digital mixing system. The expansion of the Dante systems has brought further flexibility and versatility to various production projects that keep the company busy around Cuba.
On the live sound side, they used a Dante network to link several mixers used to produce the 2016 Diplo and Major Lazer concert in Havana, which was attended by more than 450,000 fans. Blanco was also the first to use Dante for reality TV in production for Sonando en Cuba, which he calls a ‘tremendous success’.
‘We are regularly moving signals over long distances – typically more than 100m – without any interference from electric traffic, radio signals and dmx wires that are in close proximity,’ he says. ‘The Dante audio is clean, and to date we have not had one failure using Dante. Its ability to support redundant signals adds further comfort for protecting our content and productions.’
Blanco expects to continue expanding his Dante Audio-over-IP networking architecture. He is now evaluating the many available Dante-enabled products for routing audio directly to PA systems.
‘We are already saving hours at a time in set-up with Dante, and extending that network to the PA systems will further reduce that labour and save money,’ said Blanco. ‘Current market conditions put a major emphasis on reducing set-up time, storage volumes and transport weights. Dante is superior in all these aspects, and brings great value to these essential requirements.’
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