University of Strathclyde switches to Dante
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Campbell Jamieson, the learning support manager for the university, explained that over the last several years the university has been ambitiously transforming and upgrading its campus. Serious about creating and maintaining a world-class environment, investment for the transformation is set to reach £1bn by 2025.
In 2018, Jamieson and his team were looking for a way to bring a unified audio experience to the campus and to make the system easier and faster to set up and use. Luckily for them, a Dante audio network platform was able to bring everything together and as soon as the pandemic hit in 2020, it took on even greater practical importance when the necessity for hybrid and remote learning significantly accelerated the use of their Dante network across the campus.
“Originally, we started migrating to a Dante network to speed up our workflow and make our team more efficient; some of our large lecture theatres had AV systems pre-installed with analogue cabling, but they were isolated,” said Jamieson. “And we had smaller lecture spaces that didn’t have installed systems or AV cabling, so we had to spend at least a day setting those systems up and then another day tearing them down - making the spaces unusable during the transitions. Fortunately, all of these spaces have network ports that we can leverage with Dante.
"As part of our COVID response, we used our Dante network to link lecture theatres to our remote video communications, and to connect theaters together to help maintain social distancing by spreading students across multiple rooms as overflow spaces, with products like Sennheiser’s ceiling mounted microphones to easily capture and reinforce the audio needed in the rooms.”
“And with Dante, the system can scale and devices can be added easily. Our new sports facility, for example, needed some additional audio coverage, and within just minutes, we were able to add some Dante-enabled PoE speakers to cover what was needed. Being able to jump on and off the network and make changes in real-time is a huge benefit for us."
As the Dante network continued to grow, Strathclyde’s learning support team needed a way to see and monitor the entire system through a single interface. And with more users operating the system, security and global control were also becoming requirements.
"Our AV team wanted a single display to show the state of the Dante installation at a glance without the need to query each device individually to see how things were working - which is what Dante Domain Manager is all about," said Jamieson. "The software also provides benefits with its historical log that tracks issues and its ability to control devices across the entire campus without a team member needing to be there physically. It's really helped streamline our operations.
"Four years ago, all our audio systems were locally-connected, stand-alone analog systems that were cumbersome to modify or expand. We had no big-picture view of how things were working around the campus," continued Jamieson. "Today, we can easily configure systems and equipment as needed; and we can monitor and troubleshoot the entire system in real-time from virtually anywhere. We have new buildings coming online now, and our Dante audio network with Dante Domain Manager are key parts of the new infrastructure."
