California Baptist University (CBU) has adopted an Audinate Dante audio network to support the ever-increasing demands of several of its departments. From high-end music production and performances, to academic lectures and sporting events, CBU relies on a Dante IP audio network that runs through the entire campus, and its use of Dante Domain Manager and Dante Avio adaptors.
CBU is one of the top private Christian colleges and universities in Southern California, hosting nearly 11,000 students on a 160-acre main campus comprised of more than 30 buildings, including the Eugene and Billie Yeager Center, the 270-seat Wallace Theater, and the JoAnn Hawkins Music building—one of the nation's most advanced music production and recording facilities. Because of its critical ausio uses, the school is continuously looking for ways to easily and securely share and manage audio content throughout the campus, and in turn, improve the student experience.
Randal Murphey, Assistant Director of Multimedia Services at CBU, says the university now has around 500 total A/V spaces across the campus – and that a critical component to success in setting up these spaces is Dante. ‘Dante is becoming the standard on campus,’ Murphey confirms. ‘We are moving forward exclusively with Dante as we are a school that focuses heavily on its performances. Both Dante and Dante Domain Manager are proving to be transformational in how they improve our workflows.’
Dante Domain Manager software enables user authentication, role-based security, and audit capabilities for Dante networks while allowing seamless expansion of Dante systems over any network infrastructure.
The ways in which CBU has used Dante and Dante Domain Manager touch all aspects of the campus. Play-by-play announcing of baseball and soccer games takes place from a production studio one-quarter mile from campus. Live event audio is played out across multiple areas on campus. A CBU radio station streams to lobby areas. The School of Music can multitrack record live performances from separate facilities. Outdoor concerts are run with less labour and less equipment.
The Dante network also runs through the school's Nursing department to support accreditation requirements, where the department must record all training sessions to show that students are meeting the necessary hours. Every nurse instruction room is multitrack recorded via the network, simultaneously.
The school also uses more than 100 Dante Avio adaptors in its audio system. Available for analogue input or output, for AES3 and USB conversion, Dante the adaptors allow users to connect their favourite audio gear with any Dante-connected system — delivering the interoperability, performance and scalability that only networking can bring.
‘With Dante we’re able to share audio from a device in our music department – such as our multitrack recorder – with the sound system in a theatre or our events centre located across campus,’ Murphey says. ‘This suddenly expands the capability of every device we have on the network. And because every room on our campus is networked you realise how quickly and effectively you can add devices – or move devices – into workflows. Networking with Dante makes things flexible and scalable in a way that is quite easy to manage.’
More: www.audinate.com/ddm-edu
